ASH WEDNESDAY AND OUR SPRINGTIME OF THE CHURCH REPENTANCE............

On this Ash Wednesday, an annual day of atonement for sin for Catholic-Christians worldwide, which opens the Season of Lent - a forty day period of Prayer, Fasting, and Charitable-Giving, Believers are attending liturgies to receive the outward sign of ashes imposed on their foreheads.  The marking of our foreheads with ashes made from palms  from Passion Sunday during Holy Week last year, are a stark reminder of our ongoing need for repentance, reconciliation, and renewal, with God and others.  What the Rite of  Christian Initiation, the Catechumenate of the Church in Lent, refers to as, the Call to Continuing Conversion.  From the 4th Century of Catholic-Christianity forward, the Church has observed a penitential season of personal and communal contrition and change called Lent, an old English word for Spring - thus the Springtime of the Church.  Increasingly Ash Wednesday has become along with Good Friday, Christmas Day, and Easter Sunday, the most widely attended days at church for Catholic-Christians.  Parishioners at OLOL, as in church communities everywhere will gather at today's Masses to begin Lent 2012, by accepting their share of ashes, as they partake in the prayerful worship of God and interpersonal ministry to, and for, each other, in the Liturgy of the Word and Eucharist,  With me here at Mercy General Rehab, and Fr. Pius on vacation in Nigeria, a supply priest will be presiding at the morning and evening Ash Wednesday Masses.  I will be receiving ashes here after the celebration of Mass in the Mercy General Hospital, which Reverend Father John Healy, will preside over and which I will view on my rehab room television............Fe.  Troy