Lenten Special #1: How to Use Lent to Prepare for Easter | LITTLE BY LITTLE w/Fr Columba Jordan CFR

hi it's father columba here i hope you have been enjoying the videos as you know you're able to watch these videos for free because they're on youtube that's just how it works folks congratulations hope you enjoy them i certainly enjoy making them and the team that there's a whole team that works on these so they're free to you but they're not actually free to make so we are a crowd funded organization if you would like to support us we would like to receive your report your support if you click in the the link below there's different ways that you can give if you'd like to be a regular monthly giver that would be amazing or just once off whatever you can give big or small we'd really appreciate it god bless you and you're in our prayers [Music] and today i want to talk about preparing for lent no preparing for easter by means of lent that's what lent is all right one of my favorite authors it's this guy here not saint peter it's actually this guy here pope benedict yeah just love love what he said now some some of the stuff is like deeply theological and a bit dense and uh i fall asleep so when i need to fall asleep i'll read some of that but when i want some spiritual insight and nourishment oh man he really has amazing stuff this uh i'm gonna grab something out of this book here it's dogma and preaching pope benedict says that lent originally it was just for those preparing to be baptized it started off kind of short and then they elongated it and it was just this this time of preparation this journey and they they realized becoming a christian is not just you know one snap event you get baptized ta-da but this ongoing journey at least 40 days long over time lent was opened up not just for those becoming baptized but also penitents penitents were those who had sinned seriously and at that time in the church before they could receive communion again they would do some serious lengthy penance public often so everybody knew their man so just be glad for private confessions folks sometime after that the whole church was brought into this process of lent not because they were getting baptized obviously it's a preparation for easter it was this recognition and this growing understanding within the church that you can't just be a christian you always have to be becoming a christian it's always this process of getting more like jesus i'm sure i've said it to you before we're either going forward in in our relationship with with god or we're going back there is no kind of just going to pause here on the ski slope like no you you're going forward and you go back i'm not sure if the ski sleep slope image works for going back that would be really difficult i guess you could climb back up anyway so my thought then is along with pope benedict what benedict's thought is that we would look at our lent this year through that lens through the lens of imagine you were going to be baptized this easter imagine you're not a christian imagine you didn't have the sacraments or relationship with jesus in your life and you wanted it how would you approach this lent if this was the time of preparation for you to enter into jesus in your baptism how would you approach it what would your thoughts be how how focused would you be because you know we can just reduce it to a time of penance and you know say a few extra prayers and don't eat chocolate or something but it's actually far more than that it's not giving something up it's preparing for something amazing and for ourselves okay so we're preparing for you know heaven we we try to prepare maybe to receive jesus in holy communion every week or maybe even every day and those are like super important aspects of our life but a lot of what our preparation should be for any of the seasons of the year should be this reconnecting with that with that ultimate grace saint john paul ii he said that the the most important moment of his life was the moment of his baptism now he was baptized in poland and then you know at super catholic country and obviously he was baptized almost before he was born you know really soon after he was born they they dunked him so he couldn't remember it wasn't aware of it but he certainly was very aware by his faith that this moment was when everything happened this was the moment when salvation came to him there's this great line in that jesus says about zacchaeus you know the story is zacchaeus the tax collector who climbs the tree to see jesus and jesus you know wants to have dinner with him and zacchaeus has this big conversion just through the fact of jesus wanting to eat with him which is amazing and jesus says this line at the end you know today salvation has come to this house and that moment in saint john paul the second life when he was baptized as a child he recognized that as his moment when salvation came to his house came to his soul and for us too brothers and sisters when we really take hold of this and and enter back into these moments of incredible grace especially your baptism and you don't have to remember it you don't have to have been an adult when it happened for you to connect with that grace and to really profit from it and the more we will use this lent as a as a preparing of our soul to enter back into that at the easter vigil the more grace we will actually receive there's this really interesting i wouldn't even say theory but there's this experience that a lot of people give testimony to saint ignatius was really big on this saint ignatius of loyola the founder of the jesuits in his exercises about doing retreats and prayer and all that sort of thing big on returning to the moment of a grace he would say that if a time of prayer or if something in your prayer was a real blessing for you and you experienced grace that you should keep returning to it like it be that keeps returning to the same flower because the flower still has lots of goodness so too we can have these these graces these these moments in prayer and if you just remember them the grace actually gets re-released and if you remember then it's not just like a moment in prayer but you remember back to let's say the the most intimate moment where you most felt god's presence you actually it's not just this human experience of like oh i remember that but something of that grace is renewed in your life is re-released the word remember you know it has to do with putting something back together to remember a thing to put it back together there's something in which you actually connect to the reality of it and even if we can't remember our baptism we can meditate on it we can by faith engage with it and believe i believe that's the moment you came to me jesus to remain with me forever and as you do that you actually can experience more grace and we have this period not just like a once off in prayer experience but we have this whole period of 14 days and it's likely this opportunity to pull the bow back pull the arrow of the bow back it's a bow and arrow image just in case you're having trouble following me there so you pull the bow back and the further you pull it back the further it will go so if you just do a little excuse for you but if you pull it all the way back you get a lot more distance the more we prepare the more we enter into lent brothers and sisters the more grace we will receive and the more than we can give to others so i pray that you have a really really blessed lent this year and that you most especially reconnect to the gift that jesus did for you on the cross through his resurrection and how that came home to you in your baptism god bless you you

Channel: Called to More

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Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022