Ash Wednesday is a week away. As I am writing this reflection, I am looking forward to riding on our St Jude Mardi Gras float with other St Jude parishioners in the Brandon Mardi Gras parade this upcoming Friday. Celebrating Mardi Gras was not a tradition that I celebrated as a child and youth in Chicago and southern California, but I embrace this wonderful tradition now in my adopted state of Mississippi. Mardi Gras started as a tradition to have one last celebration before the start of the weeks of penance and fasting, of using up all the rich foods so that they would not be around as a temptation.
With Lent a week away, it is a good time for us to think about what practices we are going to apply in our lives during the holy weeks of Lent. We are going to highlight the practice of thanksgiving and gratitude in our lives here at St Jude during Lent. We will be highlighting gratitude all throughout Lent in our liturgies and in our reflections. We should also think about the practices of prayer, giving things up, and reaching out to others in how we propose to live out these holy weeks of Lent in our lives.
In our synodal listening sessions in our Diocese that we have had here at St Jude these past several weeks, we reflected on three passages from Luke’s Gospel: the Good Samaritan, the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Plain, and the Road to Emmaus. We reflected on these Scripture passages with our youth, with our adult parishioners, with our Hispanic parishioners, and even with the Catholic inmates at the state correctional facility here in Pearl. We all bring our own experiences, our own personalities, and our own point of view as to how we interpret Sacred Scripture and how Scripture interacts with our lives. As we reflected with these faithful Catholics at these synodal sessions, I heard many reflect upon the ways we should reach out to the poor and the needy to society, upon how we can reach out to our own parishioners, upon how we can get more of our parishioners back to Mass, and upon how we can foster greater respect and understanding of the Eucharist. Those insights give us a lot to think about, both as individuals and as a community of faith. Perhaps it would be fruitful to reflect upon these same things as we prepare for the holy season of Lent.
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