Four Short Daily Sermons from the Start of Lent Ashes remind us that we will die. Lent is a time to do penance that purifies us and brings us into closer union with God. It is a privileged time of grace when we must hear and heed the divine call to works of mercy.
A perfect Lent requires prayer, fasting and giving alms. Our Lady at Lourdes and the Angel at Fatima insisted upon a three-fold ‘Penance! Penance! Penance!’ The Archangel Raphael reminds Tobias, “Prayer is good with fasting and alms more than to lay up treasures of gold: For alms delivereth from death, and the same is that which purgeth away sins, and maketh to find mercy and life everlasting” (12:8-9). The world undergoes terrible temptations towards materialism. In fact, the grave crisis we face is due in no small part to men failing to piously use their wealth to combat evil and support [...]
