Dear ones, Lent is upon us.
It is time to set aside the Ordinary Time of winter and embrace the
beauty and simplicity of the Lenten season.
Did she really just refer to Lent
as beautiful?? I did. Naturally, I will have plenty of groan-worthy
moments during Lent. We all will. Lent is beautiful, but not because of it’s
glitz and glamour; not because of an ease with which we perfectly perform. Lent is beautiful because it is an
opportunity to cast off the sin that so easily entangles us, embrace God’s charge
to love others more deeply, and, despite our inevitable failures, grow closer
to our loving, forgiving, resurrected Lord.
As Archbishop Caput has said, “Lent is an opportunity and a grace, not a
burden…..Unless we understand our own sinfulness, unless we understand the
urgency of repentance and reconciliation, the Cross makes no sense; the
Resurrection makes no sense.”
This year, I used the extended time between Christmas and
Ash Wednesday to prepare for our Lenten journey. Why
prepare for a season of preparation, you may ask? As parents, we make weekly meal plans so we
are ready to prepare nightly dinners, as students we gather the materials we
need to make our study and test preparation time fruitful. Similarly, I realized through years past that
our family’s spiritual journey is fuller during Lent when we have a road map to
help us make the most of all forty days.
The three pillars of the Lenten season are prayer, fasting
and alms giving. I have come to center
our Lenten celebrations around these three themes. When I first started searching for Lenten
activities to do with our children several years ago, I was amazed by the
wonderful and reverent ways that many families were celebrating Lent together. Over time, we have embraced many of these
traditions as our own. What follows is
my plan for Lent.
Prayer
Our focus on prayer this year will center around morning
prayer, afternoon prayer and evening prayer together as a family. For morning prayer, I am planning to use the
“Box of Blessings” scripture cards that my children received from their
Godmother earlier this year. Each
morning at breakfast we’ll take a scripture card from our Lenten calendar, read
it and then say a prayer for our day. In
the afternoon after school, we’ll draw one of the Christmas cards that we
received during the holidays and pray for those family members or friends. In the evening, after dinner, we will read a
Bible story aloud and say a special prayer together. In the past I have read from our Jesus Storybook Bible. This year, I bought the
Jesus Calling Bible Storybook. I am
planning to give it to my kids today as a Marti Gras gift. In keeping with the Jesus Tree concept (a
Lenten continuation of the Advent Jesse Tree -- a tradition I admire and have
tweaked for our family), the stories we read each night will be from Jesus’
life and ministry, leading to his Passion and Resurrection. During the final two weeks of Lent, I get out
our Stations of the Cross Eggs, which I made last year, inspired by this at Catholic Icing. For those days, we read a Station
of the Cross each night at dinner and open the corresponding egg. My kids loved doing this last year.
There are many excellent versions of Lenten reading journeys
for young families. Some of my favorite Jesus
Tree examples can be found at A Holy Experience, Shower of Roses and Jesse TreeTreasures.
Fasting
None of my children are of official fasting age, and as a
nursing mother I am exempted from the full obligation of the Lenten fast. Nonetheless, we fully intend to embrace this
important part of the season. We’ll
enjoy meatless Fridays, of course, probably with meals of soup and pretzels (a
reminder of us to pray!). For Ash
Wednesday, I am planning to make black bean soup and bread to introduce another
part of our fasting that our kids always enjoy.
I set out a jar of dried black bean on Ash Wednesday, next to a small
Easter basket. Each time the kids do
something particularly loving, selfless or helpful, they get to put a “bean in
the basket.” On Easter morning, when we
celebrate the way Christ makes all things new, our black beans are replaced by
jelly beans. The presence of the dried
bean jar on our table serves as an ever-present reminder to fast from un-loving
habits and give up more of ourselves to God.
Alms Giving
In an effort to help my children see a connection between
our fasting and our giving, every Friday after dinner they will get to take a
piece of food from our pantry and put it in our family food basket for the
poor. I also hope to do some of our
giving together as a family on Sundays.
T and I will describe the work of a few charities to our children and
let them choose the one they would like to support. We read about our family members doing this last
year and loved their reflection.
In years past, I have eagerly undertaken the “40 bags in 40
days” challenge, in which we tried to give away 40 bags of items during
Lent. Upon reflection this year, I
realized that I spent so much of my free time and effort last Lent working on
this, that it squeezed out time that I would have spent praying or reflecting
(there is only so much free time during nap time!). This year, I am going to try to focus on
prayer time first during naptime. I love
the spirit of this challenge and may use the Easter season to follow through on
some of my spring cleaning/giving ambitions.
Marking the Days
Aside from the three themes of our Lent, there are many ways
to mark the passing of days. I realized
after Christmas that our enthusiasm over Advent calendars can easily translate
into Lent calendars. This year we are
going to use the Lent color calendar from Catholic Icing. We are also going to do a Lamb of God craft. We’ll assemble lamb out of construction paper
on Ash Wednesday, make 40 circles on it and add a cotton ball to our lambs each
day. We’ll have lovely lamb decorations
in time for Easter! I also admire the 40 Ways in 40 Days idea from Dixie Delights. We can add a "Way" card to each day of our Lenten calendar!
As our Lenten journey begins tomorrow, my prayer is for all
of our families, that we will embrace this season with intentionality and love,
looking toward our loving Savior for strength and example.
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