LENT-Greatest Season of Grace!

J+M+J+A+J

WHAT DO YOU WANT OUT OF LENT?

Your answer should be:   “HEAVEN”.

Why did God make us and every ratio­nal being?  KLSO — God made us to: Know Him, Love Him, Serve Him, & Obey Him.

What do we get if we do so?  HEAVEN.

What is so great about Heav­en?  Since God Is The Only Being, Who makes us per­fect­ly hap­py, when we die and go to Heav­en, we see God, Face to face, and we enjoy per­fect peace, hap­pi­ness, and joy, not for just a few moments, but for all eter­ni­ty, which nev­er ends.

How does Lent help us to get to Heaven?

Lent is the most impor­tant sea­son of grace all year.  Dur­ing Lent, we are to change to become clos­er to God, so that we can repeat our Bap­tismal Vows at East­er and be able to keep them well.  The more we keep our Bap­tismal Vows, the clos­er we are to God and to His Reward for a life lived with Him here on earth and a holy, hap­py death, which allows us to go straight to Heav­en, with no stops along the way.

We should fol­low a M/A/P to East­er — our Lord’s Tri­umphant Resurrection/Victory over death.  Write down, now, three things you are going to do dur­ing Lent, to com­plete this M.A.P.:

M = Mor­ti­fi­ca­tion:  __________________
A = Alms­giv­ing:  _____________________
P = (Extra) Prayer_____________________

M = One of the ways to help us to become clos­er to God is to detach our­selves from mate­r­i­al things and attach our­selves ever clos­er to God and to the things of God.  Mor­ti­fi­ca­tion, which means dying to the flesh, helps emp­ty us some­what of our mate­r­i­al desires and helps us to be more open to the Whisperings/Inspirations of The Holy Spir­it.  We are also try­ing to imi­tate Jesus Christ’s Exam­ple when He fast­ed from food and water for 40 days before He began His Pub­lic Min­istry on earth.  He did not need to fast, as He was per­fect­ly detached from all earth­ly things, but He Is The Way we are to live and die holily, so He gave us The Exam­ple to fol­low when He fast­ed.  We can abstain from more than one thing, and it should be some­thing, which is not absolute­ly nec­es­sary to eat or drink, and it can include smok­ing, as well. We can begin any good habit or begin to get a han­dle on any bad habit, dur­ing Lent.  The more dif­fi­cult it is, the more The Lord will appre­ci­ate our sac­ri­fice and the more He will reward us by help­ing us to be more like Him and to be clos­er to Him at the end of Lent:  Easter.

A = giv­ing alms or dona­tions to those in need or to those, who are our ene­mies.  Our Lord Jesus Christ lived on donations/alms dur­ing His Pub­lic Min­istry, yet He still had the per­son, who con­trolled the purse/money give mon­ey to oth­ers, who were poor or in need.  Our Lord did this, even though He did not have a home in which to live and often slept out­side on the ground.  This should show us that we all have some­thing we can give to oth­ers in need.  If we can­not give mon­ey or mate­r­i­al help, we can pray fer­vent­ly, dai­ly, for those we meet and those we don’t even know, who need help.  We also should help mate­ri­al­ly and/or by prayer those, who don’t like us or who are estranged from us — our neigh­bors are those, who are in need and who are our ene­mies. Our Lord showed us how to treat our ene­mies, when He said to The Father from The Cross: “Father, for­give them, for they know not what they do.”  He for­gave those, who were tor­tur­ing Him, mur­der­ing Him, spit­ting upon Him, blas­phem­ing Him, even though they did not ask or want His For­give­ness.  If we do not show Mer­cy to or for­give those, who hurt us, God will not show Mer­cy or for­give us — as shown to us in the “Our Father”.  We can say, dai­ly, about our unfor­giv­en ene­mies: “Jesus, I for­give him/her/them; help me to for­give him/her/them,” until we do for­give him/her/them.

P = If we do not pray, we can­not reach Heav­en.  Why not?  We can­not reach Heav­en on our own — we have to rely on help from God, often through His Saints, to reach Heav­en.  How do we obtain this help?  Well, nat­u­ral­ly, we want to do what we want to do, when we want to do it, and where we want to do it — that is our will — what we want and don’t want to do.  But, we can only get to Heav­en by doing God’s Will.  So, how do we find out what His Will for us is, and how do we get the pow­er to go against our wills to do God’s Will?

We learn our Faith by research­ing it — we read one or more of the effec­tive cat­e­chisms  (https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=3321,    https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM, etc.), which teach well The Catholic Faith.  This would include mem­o­riz­ing The Ten Com­mand­ments, which are writ­ten on each person’s heart and are our ele­men­tary guide to a holy life.  When we have man­aged to keep for the most part, the Com­mand­ments, and go fre­quent­ly to Con­fes­sion — week­ly — to rec­on­cile our­selves to God when we fall, then, we try to live out the New Com­mand­ments of  The New Testament/ Covenant:  The Beatitudes.

We can only live out well The Beat­i­tudes if we are drink­ing reg­u­lar­ly and fre­quent­ly from the well­springs of grace, which are the Sev­en Sacra­ments.  Through the Sev­en Sacra­ments, which our Lord insti­tut­ed, we receive grace — the pow­er to do God’s Will — and to live, as He did. 

Through Bap­tism, we become Chil­dren of God.  The heavy bur­den of Orig­i­nal, Mor­tal Sin is lift­ed off of our souls, so that we can see what is right and wrong, true and false much more eas­i­ly.  (St. Matt.:28:19)  Accord­ing to Proverbs 24:16:  “For a just man shall fall sev­en times and shall rise again…”  As our Lord knew that the major­i­ty of us would sin sev­er­al times a day, He want­ed to give us a means to make up to Him for our betray­als and to become His close Friends again, so He gave us Con­fes­sion or Penance (St. John: 20:21–23).  This is an incred­i­ble gift, which noth­ing can buy — peace with God. 

The Most Holy Eucharist is our Dai­ly, Spir­i­tu­al Food, our “Dai­ly Bread”.  Each time we “com­mune” with Him, receive “Jesus-look­ing-like-Bread­/­Je­sus-look­ing-like-Wine”, He helps us to do His Will, imi­tate Him, and become ever clos­er to Him (St. Matt.: 6:11). 

When we receive Con­fir­ma­tion while we are in a state of grace or are returned to a state of grace, lat­er on, God makes us Sol­diers in Christ — gives us the Sev­en Gifts of The Holy Ghost:  wis­dom, under­stand­ing, coun­sel, for­ti­tude (or courage), knowl­edge, piety — love of God — and fear of the Lord. 

Holy Orders gives us spir­i­tu­al fathers, called by God to con­se­crate their lives to lead­ing us to Heav­en — to teach us, to gov­ern us, and to sanc­ti­fy us (St. John:20:22). 

Through Holy Mat­ri­mo­ny, The Holy Ghost descends upon a valid­ly bap­tized man and woman, who are in a state of grace/friendship with God, for whom no imped­i­ments exist.  He gives this cou­ple the grace to remain togeth­er for the rest of their lives, to live at least civil­ly with each oth­er, to help each oth­er to be good and become Cit­i­zens of Heav­en.  The cou­ple have to be open to all of the chil­dren, whom God wants to send them and are respon­si­ble before Him to raise them to be Cit­i­zens of Heav­en, as well.  In this way, the King­dom of Heav­en is built up. 

The Anoint­ing of the Sick is admin­is­tered by Catholic Priests to a Catholic, who is in dan­ger of death or who is dying.  If the Catholic is cog­nizant, he should make a good Con­fes­sion; then the Priest will, through the pow­er giv­en to him, from God, for­give his sins and anoint him, so that if he were to die at that very moment, with­out sin­ning, even in thought, the Catholic would go straight to Heav­en.  Some­times, the Catholic is healed not only spir­i­tu­al­ly but phys­i­cal­ly, as well.  That is why, if a Catholic is to under­go a dan­ger­ous oper­a­tion, he should receive the Anoint­ing of the Sick, first.

PRAY!—Prayer is com­mu­ni­ca­tion with God — to adore Him, love Him, ask for for­give­ness, and final­ly peti­tion Him for our and/or oth­ers’ needs.  Prayer should start in the morn­ing and should be done reg­u­lar­ly at var­i­ous times through­out the day and night and in case of need.  Prayer helps us to receive the Sacra­ments well, so that we gain the max­i­mum amount of grace to do God’s Will — not ours — and get to Heav­en when we die.  Some impor­tant prayers include: The Holy Rosary, The Chap­let of Divine Mer­cy, The Way of The Cross, The Morn­ing Offer­ing, The Angelus, The Acts of Faith, Hope, and Char­i­ty, The Act of Con­tri­tion, Prayers before & after Holy Com­mu­nion, Prayers before & after Con­fes­sion,… If we pray one or more of the above dai­ly, & make more fre­quent use of the Sacra­ments, we will def­i­nite­ly become clos­er to God and fol­low­ing in His Way.  (Some of these prayers are found on this web­site, i.e., “Divine Mer­cy NOW!” and “Prayers Dai­ly, PD2, and PD 3”, wh ich can be print­ed out.)

Print out, hand out, and fol­low the attached M/A/P to a good Lent, a joy-filled East­er, & a clos­er rela­tion­ship with Jesus, our Sav­ior & our King!

LENTandThe-MostHolyFace‑1–2

 

© & All Rights Reserved, The Holy Fam­i­ly House, A.D. 2009 and on.  This can be repro­duced, GRATIS, with leg­i­ble copy­right includ­ed.  † A.M.D.G.