Last Updated on February 6, 2016 by Editor
From the moment we wake up until the late hours of night, so many of us are connected with the gadgets of social media and communications.
Check your e-mail and Facebook. Scan the laptop and your iPad, and bring the smartphone to life – hopefully recharged.
We are so easily and obsessively connected with everyone and everything.
Now entering the 40 days of Lent, which will carry us from the chilly blows of winter to the earliest days of spring, we are invited to be connected with the heart of faith. This connection is not digital or electronic; it is spiritual and practical.
Lent calls us to recognize the presence and activity of God in Jesus happening in our lives and situations.
For more than 40 years, I’ve led good Catholic people through the season of Lent. We heard the proclaimed Gospel, giving up this and that, and tried taking on positive Lenten practices of learning, praying and charity.
We’ve put on the color purple, been marked with ashes, walked with Jesus on the Stations of the Cross, but we should keep in mind the difference between the traditions and trappings of faith in Lent and the real connecting with the heart of faith, and the renewal and refreshing of our personal faith and our parish household faith.
Every Lent — each year it happens — always happens in the particular rootedness of our own times and place and existing situations. Lent this time around will echo this time and this place.
The invitation to connect with God’s presence and activity hopefully will help and nurture a better faith to meet the challenges of this time and to grapple with the demands of this place.
Have a happy and a holy Lent.