Lent Is Not About You

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Lent is not just about you. You are going to be praying and sacrificing for 40 days. That will be fantastic for your own spiritual growth. But imagine if the 14k+ people praying this Rosary daily were to commit to offer their Lenten prayer and sacrifices for the deeper conversion of all the family members and friends who have been submitted to our prayer list? I have been praying and thinking about this and I believe if we all do this together from now, the beginning of Lent until Easter, we will reap a big harvest of deeper conversions. So I’m inviting you to submit names of family and friends and to join me in offering prayer and sacrifice for their conversion. 

I have a confession to make. I’m not very good about doing my Lenten practices for myself, keeping up and not trailing off. But I’ll tell you this, I am motivated to join together with you for the deeper conversion of your loved ones especially when I know you are doing the same for mine.

I am going to offer my prayer and sacrifice every day of Lent for all the names on the list. Will you join me?

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We practice Lent in imitation of Jesus who went into the desert for 40 days, engaging in the spiritual battle with the two weapons of Prayer and Sacrifice.

CCC 540 By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the event of Jesus in the desert.

Every Lent we are called to join Jesus in the battle against spiritual evils armed with the weapons of prayer and sacrifice.

All the effort of Satan is to turn us away from God

·       That is what sin is - to turn away from God

Prayer is the most immediate way of turning toward God and encountering him

Penance (fasting and sacrifice) strengthen us to resist turning away from God in sin and toward God in love.

So Lent is a one two punch, in imitation of Jesus of

1.  turning toward God in a greater way by prayer

2.  Turning away from temptation and sin by sacrifice

by these two weapons we join the Redemptive mission of Jesus to help him save souls

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Let us not forget to offer the Cross we already have.

When we take on new sacrifices don’t forget to accept and offer up the crosses you already have. Everything in our life that we did not choose, do not like, cannot change and cannot understand can be a cross. Jesus saved souls by His cross. He allows a cross in our lives so that we can help him save souls. But Many times, when we have a cross, we could offer it to him, and instead we start praying like this: “Lord, please, take this cross from my shoulders, it’s heavy, I can’t carry it. Why did you give it to me and not someone else? “ No! This is not how we should pray! Our Lady tells us that we should rather say: “Lord, I thank you for this cross, thank you for this great gift that you give me! I offer it up for the conversion of souls.”

So it is good to take on new sacrifices for Lent. But in this mission to help Jesus save souls – don’t neglect the crosses you have already been given.

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This Lent while we are offering prayer and sacrifice let us not forget to offer these for our family and friends who have died – and for all the souls in purgatory. Those in purgatory cannot help themselves. They rely on us. Let us also offer our Lenten practices for them.

The Lord said to St Faustina “Enter into PURGATORY often, because they need you there.” (Diary, 1738)

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The CCC 2027 teaches that Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life…

It’s one thing to do this on your own. Now imagine if we all pooled our resources, if we all joined our prayer and sacrifice together creating a spiritual reservoir of grace that Jesus would pour out on our family and friends. That is what we are doing with The Movement of the Holy Family. The Church gives us an official way of joining together and combining our spiritual resources for the good of others. I want to get as many people praying and sacrificing for my loved ones and I want to do the same for yours – so I am inviting you to join us in the Movement of the Holy Family.

Every morning at Mass, when the gifts are placed on the altar, I say to Jesus, I offer you my prayer, work, joy and suffering, and I unite them to your sacrifice made present in this Mass and I offer them for the intentions of all the Members of the Movement and for my own intentions – which I then name. 

There is a spiritual army to back you up for your good.