Celebrating Lent

For all the baptized, Lent is the time to deepen and renew our own baptismal commitment. It is the primary penitential season in the Church’s liturgical year, during which the faithful embrace the traditional practices of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving in preparation to renew their baptismal promises on Easter. These expressions of penance and self-denial manifest the Christian’s continual need for conversion. Lent reflects the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert in fasting and prayer.

National Directory for Catechesis 37A: Sacred Time: The Liturgical Year

Lent—through its threefold dimensions of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving (charity)—calls us to look at our whole selves. Each of these dimensions zeroes in on the relationships of our lives: prayer (to our God); charity (to our neighbor); and fasting (to ourselves). Forty days is enough time to strengthen all of these relationships in order to become more life-giving and more love-giving. It is time enough for us to discern what pulls us away from a deeper relationship with our Savior and what draws us closer to our God and to each other.

Now is the acceptable time . . .

Resources for Celebrating Lent