Suggestions for Celebrating a Fruitful Lenten Season.

The season of Lent is here once again. It is the season that invites us to reflect and prepare our hearts and minds for the great feast of Easter. The Lenten season offers each one of us the opportunity to go deeper into our connection with God. The question, however, is how to prepare and what to do. The National Catholic Register, a Catholic newspaper in the United States, offers some simple suggestions for celebrating Lent fruitfully. First on the list is Reading the Bible. The recommendation suggests beginning with the New Testament, especially the Gospels, where the events lead us to the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Another one on the list is praying the Stations of the Cross. This devotional prayer, accompanied by Scriptural passages, commemorates and focuses on specific events of Jesus’ last day, beginning with His condemnation. The following stations of the cross are those celebrated by Pope John Paul II on Good Friday 1991, presented as an alternative to the traditional stations and as a way of reflecting more deeply on the Scriptural accounts of Christ’s passion. Link.  For other versions of the Way of the Cross as celebrated by other Popes and are also available in other languages, see in this link. 

For other suggestions on how to celebrate a fruitful Lenten season, like doing corporal works of mercy which echoes the Lord Jesus’ invitation in the gospel of Matthew (25:31-40), read.