the mud and muck of Lent

Here we are, heading toward Jerusalem with Jesus. Palm Sunday is in two days, and all of sudden we’re neck-deep into Lent, aren’t we?

I don’t know about you, but for me this also means I’m immersed in the mud and muck, the nitty-gritty down and dirty of all my good intentions, misgivings, and desires.

All I have to say is that this business of loving our neighbor is not for sissys:

“This offering of ourselves, all we possess, and everything we have received from God forms part of our prayer of adoration in which we recognize and profess our dependence on God. For if we offer all these things to God, it is because we count on him to provide or to preserve them for us and because he has given them to us only so that we may render him honor and glory because of them.  

We ask God for the things we need to achieve our salvation when we beg him both to give us the graces necessary for us to do good and avoid evil and to grant us pardon for our sins.  

Asking God for the graces needed to do good means asking him to give us the opportunity and the facility to perform some good action that we find difficult, such as pardoning a person who has wronged us or who is ill-disposed to us, doing all the good we can for that person, or, more particularly, greeting that person, saluting when we meet, and speaking with much charity even if we feel great repugnance in doing this, or accomplishing some other action that we may have an opportunity of doing either now or soon."

~Saint John Baptist de la Salle, as published in Magnificat Magazine

Let us pray for one another 

as we walk with the Lord 

towards the cross of our salvation!