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Stained Glass from
St. Joseph's

Want to learn more?
Click here to learn about this and the other stained glass windows in our church designed by parishioner and local artist Mary Mullins.

Lent

Lenten Reflection

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This Year the season of Lent is celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church from February 22-April 8. 

The purpose of Lent is to be a season of fasting, self-denial, Christian growth, penitence, conversion, and simplicity. The word Lent means “springtime.”  This season can be viewed from the perspective of Stewardship: it is spiritual spring cleaning—a time for taking spiritual inventory and then cleaning out those things which hinder our relationships with Jesus Christ and our service to Him. The season of Lent begins with a symbol of repentance: receiving ashes on one's forehead.  To reflect this, our interior life should lead us toward greater dependence on God’s mercy and grace and less attachment to those things which distract us from living as stewards of God’s gifts.

Making a Great Lent!
There are three traditional spiritual practices that serve as the foundation of Lenten penance:  prayer, fasting, and alms giving. These penances should be practiced throughout the year, but are given special prominence during Lent. 

Prayer: Lent is a good time to develop or strengthen a discipline of daily prayer. Praying the Rosary throughout Lent can be very rewarding, especially if your family is not in the regular habit of doing so. Daily Mass and the Stations of the Cross are also great ways to draw closer to God during Lent. It is not too late to sign up for ARISE, our parish Lenten bible study and faith sharing.

Fasting: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are obligatory days of universal fast and abstinence. Fasting is obligatory for all who have completed their 18th year and have not yet reached their 60th year. Fasting allows a person to eat one full meal. Two smaller meals may be taken, not to equal one full meal. Abstinence (from meat) is obligatory for all who have reached their 14th year. Further, all Fridays in Lent are obligatory days of complete abstinence (from meat) for all who have completed their 14th year. If possible, the fast on Good Friday is continued until the Easter Vigil (on Holy Saturday night) as the "paschal fast" to honor the suffering and death of our Lord, and to prepare ourselves to share more fully and to celebrate more readily His Resurrection.

Almsgiving (Charity): While Lent is about giving something up (i.e. fasting), it is also about putting something positive in its place. The best way to remove vice is to cultivate virtue. Lent has been a traditional time of helping the poor and doing acts of charity and mercy. While as Christians this is a year-round calling, Lent is a good time to examine ways to get involved and to make resolutions to actually do them.

Through our works of prayer, fasting, and abstinence, let us heed the prophet Joel's exhortation to return to God with our whole heart (2:12).

Fr. Joseph Illo's Lenten Homilies

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Suggested Lenten Reading

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Jesus of Nazareth, Part II
Pope Benedict XVI
Available Soon in St. Joseph's bookstore

More titles

Visit our Parish Library for more Lenten titles

Suggested Lenten Links

EWTN Lenten Page

Information about celebrating Lent well as a family at wf-f.org

Lenten Schedule & Events

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Fri., March 23rd
    Stations of the Cross @ 8:45am, 6:30pm (Spanish),     7:30pm (English)
    Knight of Columbus Fish Fry @ 5pm

Sun., March 25th - Wed., March 28th
    Lenten Mission with Fr. Jay Mello @ 7pm (March         25th in the hall, all other nights in the Church)

Wed., March 28th
    Lenten Penance Service @ 7pm

Fri., March 30th
    Stations of the Cross @ 8:45am, 6:30pm (Spanish),     7:30pm (English)
    Knight of Columbus Soup Dinner @ 5pm

Sun., April 1st Palm Sunday
    Regular Mass Schedule

Thur., April 5th - Holy Thursday
    Tenebrae @ 8am
    Holy Thursday Concert @ 6pm, church, More Info>>
    Solemn Mass of the Lord's Supper @ 7:30pm             (English in the church, Spanish in the hall)

Fri., April 6th - Good Friday
    Tenebrae @ 8am
    Walk for Life Modesto @ 8am East Ridge Church
    Live Stations of the Cross @ 12noon
    Veneration of the Cross @ 1:30pm

Sat., April 7th - Holy Saturday
    Tenebrae @ 8am

    Easter Vigil Mass @ 8:30pm
     (English-Church, Spanish-Hall)

Sun., April 8th - Easter Sunday Masses
6am, 7:30am, 9am (Latin), 10:30am Church, 10:30am Hall, 12noon, 1:30pm (Español), 5:30pm (Initiation of Children & Teens)

 

Lenten Missions

March 25th - March 28th
with Fr. Jay Mello,
at 7pm More Info>>

Must-See Fr. Barron Videos

 

Fr. Barron's Lenten Weekly Reflections:

Click on image to go to Fr. Barron's blog...
 

 

Spiritual Reading for Lent

Pope Benedict XVI
Message for Lent 2012

Benedict XVI
“Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works” (Heb 10:24)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Lenten season offers us once again an opportunity to reflect upon the very heart of Christian life: charity. This is a favourable time to renew our journey of faith, both as individuals and as a community, with the help of the word of God and the sacraments. This journey is one marked by prayer and sharing, silence and fasting, in anticipation of the joy of Easter.

This year I would like to propose a few thoughts in the light of a brief biblical passage drawn from the Letter to the Hebrews:“ Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works”. These words are part of a passage in which the sacred author exhorts us to trust in Jesus Christ as the High Priest who has won us forgiveness and opened up a pathway to God. Embracing Christ bears fruit in a life structured by the three theological virtues: it means approaching the Lord “sincere in heart and filled with faith” (v. 22), keeping firm “in the hope we profess” (v. 23) and ever mindful of living a life of “love and good works” (v. 24) together with our brothers and sisters. The author states that to sustain this life shaped by the Gospel it is important to participate in the liturgy and community prayer, mindful of the eschatological goal of full communion in God (v. 25). Here I would like to reflect on verse 24, which offers a succinct, valuable and ever timely teaching on the three aspects of Christian life: concern for others, reciprocity and personal holiness.

Read the full message.

Our Lady of Sorrows

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O most holy Virgin, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ: by the overwhelming grief you experienced when you witnessed the martyrdom, the crucifixion, and the death of your divine Son, look upon me with eyes of compassion, and awaken in my heart a tender commiseration for those sufferings, as well as a sincere detestation of my sins, in order that, being disengaged from all undue affection for the passing joys of this earth, I may sigh after the eternal Jerusalem, and that henceforward all my thoughts and all my actions may be directed towards this one most desirable object. Honor, glory, and love to our divine Lord Jesus, and to the holy and immaculate Mother of God. Amen. --Saint Bonaventure
 

A Word About Lent: Fr. Benedict Groeschel
   Most of us are unaware that times of penance, fasting, and prayer for forgiveness are part of the traditions of many of the world's great religions. Most Christians are aware that our Jewish neighbors observe Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, as a time of fasting, penance, and asking for God's mercy and forgiveness.
   As many Muslims make their homes among us, we now are becoming familiar with Ramadan, a whole month of complete penitential fasting, even from water, from sunrise to sunset. The early Christians were familiar with a similar period observed by the Roman pagans in February, a name that means the month of whips, so called for the scourges they used for self-discipline and penance. In fact that is why the ancient Romans made this cold, dark month the shortest of the year.
   In early Christian times the custom of fasting and penance was adopted by the Church in East and West to prepare for the solemn commemoration of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, which were celebrated during the Sacred Triduum, or the three holy days at the end of Holy Week. The oldest Catholic custom outside the prescriptions of the New Testament--the making of the sign of the Cross--was linked with the traditional biblical sign of penance, the imposition of ashes on one's head. The ceremonies of Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday--the commemoration of Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem--brought the time of Lenten Penance to a dramatic close with the observance of the Easter Vigil. The origin of all these customs, paralleling the Jewish observance of Passover, was a powerful need both to acknowledge gratefully Christ's gift of Himself for our salvation and to instruct people on the meaning of the events in salvation history.
   Unfortunately, the observance of Lent has become modified to such an extent that many do not really observe its penitential spirit. They are consequently deprived of experiencing the profound spiritual renewal of the Sacred Triduum and the re-commitment to their baptismal promises made to Christ at Easter.

This is taken from Father Benedict Groeschel's book The King, Crucified and Risen: Meditations on the Passion and Glory of Christ, Servant Publications.

Father Benedict Groeshel, CFR is an internationally know lecturer and retreat master as well as a professor of pastoral psychology at St. Joseph's Seminary in New York. He also appears regularly on EWTN.