The Joyful Season of Lent

Lent is the time when the church changes its color into purple.

It is also the time when flowers are not permitted to be in the altar, the church also does not allow us to use loud instruments and does not allows us to sing the alleluia and the gloria.

In spite of all of these that the church removes all the symbols of happiness, the church still calls this season as the season of Joy. The joyful season of Lent.

When we said Lent, that is a german term which means spring time.

A new hope, a dawn of a great future.The coming of something that is beautiful and wonderful.

Cuaresma is comes from the word cuadragesima and cuarenta which means forty days, and in the bible when we said forty it is a time of purification.

During the time of noah, the rain falls on forty days and forty nights, as if to kill every creature in order for a new beginning to come.

It is a days of purification and reparation.

Days of destroying the old so that something new may be built.

Lent starts during ash Wednesday, but if you notice before, the formula that the church use was "Remember man that you are dust and to dust you shall return".

It emphasized that we are only a dust, it emphasized that we are sinful and unworthy in front of God.

But that has been change, the formula we are using now says, "Turn away from sins and be faithful to the Gospel." which means truly we are dust, truly we are sinful, truly we are nothing but we are so much valued by God that He has given his likeness to all of us, and more than that, because of us, His beloved Son offers His life.

Forty days wants to tell us, Hey, you are not just an ordinary, you are not cheap, you are now a child of God. You can now claim the Lord as your father and you are an heir of His kingdom.

What is the good news of lent?

.. The good news is that we still have hope and we are so much loved by God..

During Holy week, We begin the liturgy by commemorating the Palm Sunday, when actually the church calls it Passion Sunday. Truly we remember how he was welcomed with palms into the city of Jerusalem but the church also wants to tell us that it is the day that we read the Passion of Jesus. The pain and the suffering that He embraced for us sinners. But I think what we should remember is this, that even as we remember the pains He had to gone through, we should remember the love that pushed Him to embrace all of these.

Passion Sunday can be defined as two things:

Passion: suffering and pain of Jesus and

Passion as a tremendous love that pushed Him to claim the punishment that should be ours.

Thats why as we enter into the Holy week, It begins in telling us of what this God can do for us. We should be amazed by all of these, that sense of thanksgiving, that sense of saying "Lord, we are nothing without You".

That is why when we said Holy week, it is the days most solemn to the church.

On Maundy Thursday, we celebrate two things the anniversary of the priests and the feast of the institution of the Holy Eucharist. Because on that day during the last supper which we commemorate in the mass, Jesus in an unbloody manner, decided to offer Himself. When He took the bread and said "It is my Body" and when he took the cup and said "It is my blood", that is an offering of Himself but not in a bloody manner, that he will fulfill the next day during good Friday, on the cross when his body will be broken and when His blood will be poured out. We must see the connection between that Maundy Thursday and the Good Friday.

When Good Friday comes, We dont have a mass but we have what we called the Veneration of the Cross. Why? Because during the early times the cross symbolized defeat and too much punishment, but Christ went through that, not because of anything else but because He can accept anything for you and for me.

That is why on the day of Good Friday, we kiss the cross and not only we kiss the cross, on that day all catholics kneel and genuflect before the cross to say "Lord this is the symbol of your unconquerable love for us" it is also the symbol of the victory of love. The cross becomes not a symbol of defeat but a symbol of unconquerable Love.

And on the evening of Saturday,  we will be told, He conquers not only darkness, He conquers not only sin, He conquers even death.



Have a blessed and meaningful Lent,

Ash

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a repost from last year's entry.