March 3, 2019

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

As the Season of Lent approaches this would be an excellent Sunday to consider how you are going to enter into this time of preparation for the celebration of Easter. The Church bids us to take up the penitential practices of prayer, fasting, and the giving of alms, (charity). Our focus should be on the Cross, the symbol of Christ's sacrificial love. Not so much what one is giving up, but, rather, how to die to self in order that Christ may live in me. When you receive the mark of the ashes on your forehead and hear the minister say, "Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return," this statement is not meant as a curse, it is a statement of our mortal nature. We are men and women of clay and we shall return to the Earth from whence we came. It is Jesus the Christ, who redeems us by His Sacrifice and gives us eternal life.

Let us take up the discipline of Lent together, that we may all come to the Glory of the Resurrection through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

In Christ,
Fr. Thomas