What a difference a week makes! As I’m writing this column, I’m looking out over the parking lot, where dozens of our school kids are running, screaming, and laughing, all enjoying a beautiful 60 degree day! It’s hard to believe, but about a week ago, we were bundled up on a freezing day trying to guess what the winter storm had in store for us. Now, that snow is melting away, and some of the plants are even starting to poke their heads out!

Over the next few weeks, we will watch the landscape slowly transform, from snow-covered sidewalks and flowed parking lots into a fresh, spring landscape. And as we enter into this holy season of Lent this week, maybe we can take inspiration from the world around us, and allow ourselves to be changed also. During Lent, we are called to grow in our faith, and to live differently. This season gives us the opportunity to spend six weeks in prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, as we work to grow in the grace that transforms us into tireless cultivators of the seeds of the Gospel.
I think Lent is my favorite liturgical season, mostly because it challenges us to take stock of where we are in our relationship with God, how ready we are to follow Christ on his royal road to the Cross, and it wakes us up, rekindling and reawakening the hope for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Hope is often a hidden virtue, tenacious and patient, but as Christians, hope is not an option for us, but a necessary part of our lives. As Pope Benedict XVI reminded us in 2007, “The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.”

This Lent, situated for us this year in the midst of the Jubilee Year of Hope, I want to invite you to join me in living intentionally, living differently, as we embrace the virtue of hope and receive the gift of new life that Christ wants to give us at Easter.

Lent is filled with opportunities to live differently, and as you consider how you’re going to do that personally through your own Lenten practices and sacrifices, I also want to invite you to some of the opportunities we’re offering as a parish family:

• Lenten Soup and Reflection Series – On Wednesdays (3/11-4/1), we’ll be having a simple soup meal beginning at 6:30 in Liguori Hall, followed by a video series from the Eucharistic Congress this past summer.
• Parish Fish Fries – The best Fish Fry in St. Louis is back! Join us in Liguori Hall from 4:30 to 7:30 to enjoy quality time (and food!) with your parish family.
• Stations of the Cross – Every Friday at 7:00 pm in the church, we’ll join Christ in sorrow and in hope on his journey to Calvary.
• Mass of Healing – On Saturday, March 29 at 9:00 am, we will celebrate a Mass and the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, joining our brothers and sisters who are experiencing bodily sickness in prayer and support.
• Hallow App – We invite you to join our Archdiocesan and parish community on the Hallow prayer app as we journey through the season together.
• Lenten Books – Take your choice of either the Little Black Books or the Word on Fire Lenten Reflection books to guide your daily prayer throughout Lent.
• 40 Hours Devotion – The Blessed Sacrament will be exposed continuously from the evening of March 7 to the afternoon of March 9, with opportunities for confession, morning and evening prayer, and the Stations of the Cross.

Let’s join together as one family of faith, one Body in Christ, and live differently this Lent, so that we might be granted the gift of a new life at Easter!