A Time Apart to Life-Giving Habits

01 March, 2006

The Lenten journey begins today with the celebration of the Eucharist and the Imposition of Ash. Traditionally, the priests put a light cross sign of ashes on everyone's forehead. The meaning of this ritual is to remind us that we are of the Earth come from ashes and die in form of ashes, too. Within the Lenten, we are also reminded of the three basic things we should get through life: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.


To me, fasting is the hard part. Why? Cause I have to give up something I like very much or some habits I am supposed not to do. For instance, I have to resist myself from too much television or too much entertainments; give up grudges (less grumble, grumpy, whining, etc, etc, etc..); fast from favorite meals (meat, muffin, snacks, grapes, etc, etc, etc); abstain from complaining; stay away from talking gossips... *Come on, no woman in the world who doesn't love gossips!*; and do other many ways to keep Lent working (such as be humble, patient in hardship, hopeful in disappointment, be hopeful yourself, mean it to say "thanks", read the Bible, tender a compliment, apologize if you are wrong, count your blessings, keep a promise, see your problem as challenges and your challenges as blessings, and so on)


Every Fridays of Lent, on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, we are obliged to abstain from eating meat. I was surprised to read a letter from Bishop of the Diocese of Arlington, VA, that we are dispensed from the abstinence on March 17, 2006, in observance of Saint Patrick's Day. However, we have to choose any other day during the week of March 13-18 to replace it. Well, I can understand why the church has to get flexible at this point because most of the congregations who we know are originally from Ireland or part of the countries in Europe celebrate the Saint Patrick's day as big as any other holiday like Christmas and Easter. No surprise to find meat would be served as a main dishes when you have such big feast..


Like anyone else, I do have some spiritual goals. What I set to be a spiritual goal during this Lent is to understand better the mystery of Christ's death and rising.