Your Best Lent Ever (2024 Edition)
Volume XXVIII, Number 2
February 14, 2024
Beloved Readers,
What I love about you is that you already know what to do for Lent. I'm just here to encourage you, "enjoy" Ash Wednesday with you, and to offer my own self-denials in union with you spiritually until Easter Sunday.
I have an important time-sensitive opportunity and a link to my classic "Your Best Lent Ever" message, so chop chop...
Ed Jozsa Live!
If you live anywhere within a three-hour drive of Chicago, please register for a one-of-kind all-day event featuring me and Ed Jozsa, "The Mystic Next Door," on Saturday, March 2nd.
The Holy Spirit speaks through this man more than anyone I have ever known. Ed Jozsa is anointed, especially in person.
I have witnessed his direct, powerful effect on people many times. The Holy Spirit will change your life through him.
This event will be like a retreat, a convention, and a festival all wrapped into one amazing day! It's definitely worth flying in or driving for a few hours.
Saturday, March 2ndIt begins at 10:00 am, lunch is provided, and it ends before dinnertime. There's a modest fee to cover expenses for my dear friend Peter Kitchin, the organizer.
Ed will be leading all the presentations except one, and if you heard our podcast with him, then you know he will suffer physically and spiritually to spend an entire day on his feet with us.
The country club venue is beautiful. Seating is limited for this intimate event, so register right away. You'll also meet great Catholics who share your zeal.
I will be giving one bracing talk myself, "Deliver Us from Evil" (with true stories from the True Cross Pilgrimage), and I will be available all day to personally spend time with you, talk with you, and pray with you one-on-one.
I'll also be bringing all sorts of free stuff from the Mary Foundation.
I rarely have time to do something so enjoyable. Pretty much all I do is pray, fast, work, read, exercise, pay bills, and spend time with my family and close friends. Rinse. Repeat.
Please, come spend time with me and Ed. Drive. Fly.
Your Best Lent Ever
Without further adieu, here is this year's version—which is every year's version—of my classic Lenten exhortation as we enter into what may turn out to be the most pivotal month or two of reparation in modern history:
Let us begin Ash Wednesday with folks from all over the world in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...
Oh Jesus, sometimes You feel far away.
Sometimes You feel close enough
to put your hand on my shoulder.
Show me how and give me the grace
to give you everything this Lent.
Please help me to do my best,
and by leadership or by example,
to help my family and friends do their best.
Because I love you
and I want to love you more.
Teach me that your grace
is the only wealth I need.
Please, dear Jesus,
you healed so many people
during your time on earth
and during the ensuing centuries,
through the intercession
of your Immaculate Mother,
all the saints, all the angels,
and all the relatives in heaven
of all Mary Foundation benefactors,
please give me the courage
to allow my Cross to carry me,
and to convert and heal me
and everyone I love
in mind, body, and soul.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Amen.
Lenten Quotations
"Fasting is better than prayer and almsgiving is better than both."
- Saint Clement I
"Some demons can only be driven out through prayer and fasting."
- Jesus
"We also boast in our afflictions, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance proven character, and proven character hope—and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts."
- Saint Paul, Romans 5:16
"It is only by sacrificing and suffering, offered as penance, that you will be able, by the grace of God, to convert sinners."
- Saint John Vianney
"I have done my part. May Christ teach you to do yours."
- Saint Francis of Assisi, final words on his deathbed
"My Lord has suffered as much for me."
- Savonarola, final words on his deathbed
"I am neither ashamed to live on account of my behavior, nor am I afraid to die, because I have so good a master."
- Saint Ambrose, final words on his deathbed
"Jesus! Jesus!"
- Saint Joan of Arc, final words at her death
"Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."
- Jesus' final words on the Holy Cross
Onward to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving! Onward to victory!
In addition to a number of other ongoing self-denials—including my third and final year of fasting virtually every day for Operation True Cross—I'm getting up really early with no snooze button.
How about you?
I took this cheesy car pic this morning, right after Mass.
With Saint Simon the Cyrene,
Bud Macfarlane
Founder
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