Encouraging the Culture of Encounter with Jesus Christ, His Church, and All People Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Ash Wednesday and Lent The beautiful penitential season of Lent begins this Wednesday. Take these last few days of preparation to discern well how you can open your heart to more graces through the practices of this holy season. Remember the focus of our penances is to help us prioritize rightly service of God and neighbor. The discipline trains us so we can love better. This can be a time also of reparation as well as reconciliation with God and others. It is like a six-week long retreat for the whole church.

Encouraging the Culture of Encounter with Jesus Christ, His Church, and All People Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Synod on Synodality: Communion, Participation, Mission We continue our discussion as we prepare for the Synodal Listening Session to be held at St. Paul’s. Specific dates are listed at bottom of this column. One may ask why all this preparation time? Well, I want people to know what it is we are trying to accomplish in the sessions. Because of its potential spiritual fruit, it deserves proper preparation rather than throwing it all at everyone at the meeting itself. Plus, proper preparation means the meetings will be more gracefully efficient in order to respect everyone’s time.

Encouraging the Culture of Encounter with Jesus Christ, His Church, and All People Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Synod on Synodality: Communion, Participation, Mission We continue our discussion as we prepare for the Synodal Listening Session to be held at St. Paul’s. Specific dates are forthcoming but will be in the month of March. One may ask why all this preparation time? Well, I want people to know what it is we are trying to accomplish in the sessions. Because of its potential spiritual fruit, it deserves proper preparation rather than throwing it all at everyone at the meeting itself. Plus, proper preparation means the meetings will be more gracefully efficient in order to respect everyone’s time.