LENT AND EASTER 2010 INTRODUCTION

This Lent and Easter I intend to offer two sets of reflections for each week. 

The first series will be about ‘basic facts’ connected with Lent and Easter – facts which some people have never fully been made aware of, and about which others may find an update helpful. 

The second series is more like the usual one, but will have a certain emphasis on our personal interiorization of the meaning and challenge of Lent and Easter. 

Each series is meant to get us ready for the death and resurrection of Jesus, and our own. 

I will send (today) an introductory reflection on Ash Wednesday – in each series – hence this mail-out. Next week there will be material (for each of the two series) for the first Sunday of Lent.

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In the first series, we will talk

About Lent itself, [Ash Wednesday]

about Passover,  [first Sunday of Lent]

about the Sacred Triduum, [second Sunday of Lent]

about the Holy Oils, [third Sunday of Lent]

about the renewal of our Baptism, [fourth Sunday of Lent]

about Jesus’ anointing at Bethany [fifth Sunday of Lent]

[There will more in this series during Holy Week – about the Last Supper, about Calvary, about Resurrection.]

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In the second series, we will reflect on

• ‘un-un-quieting’ [ = Ash Wednesday]
• ‘having temptations about the church’, [= first Sunday of Lent – gospel of the temptations]
• ‘right-sizing our life’,  [= second Sunday of Lent – gospel of the transfiguration]
• ‘how nothing works when you need it’, [= third Sunday of Lent – gospel of the figs]]
• ‘growing up to adulthood’, [ = fourth Sunday of Lent – gospel of the prodigal son]]
• ‘there’s no privacy now’.[ = fifth Sunday of Lent – gospel of the woman taken in adultery]]