Ready or Not, Here Comes Lent

Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the 40-day period preceding the death and then resurrection of Christ. For Catholics and many Protestants, Lent is a special time in the liturgical cycle, a a time in which we are invited to focus in a special way on our life with God – to see where we’ve been and to refocus our energies.

For Catholics, the traditional Lenten practices are fasting, almsgiving and prayer. It is not that we don’t engage in these practices at other times; they are all fundamental practices that we engage in always. But during this period, we tend to intensify our efforts.

I thought I’d take this opportunity to list here some resources for your prayer during Lent.

First, here on Creo en Dios!, I’ll be posting each Wednesday podcasts and prayer material from the Lent Retreat in Daily Living I’m offering at UST Law School (which will be meeting each Tuesday). And tomorrow I’ll be posting a podcast and materials from a program I gave at St. Edwards on Lenten prayer last weekend. The Lent Retreat in Daily Living will provide you with daily prayer material for the entirety of Lent; the St. Edwards handout has enough material for four or five weeks of daily prayer. Also, if you go to the Podcast page on top of this page, you’ll find links for the podcasts and prayer material from Lent Retreats in Daily Living I’ve offered in prior years.

Second, here are some other resources providing wonderful Lenten material:

The Ignatian Adventure – an adapted version of the Spiritual Exercises for the Lent/Easter season.

Praying Lent – Daily prayers during Lent from Creighton On-line Ministries.

Living Lent Daily – daily prayers, thoughts and other inspirations for Lent from Loyola Press.

Resources for Lent 2012 from the Episcopal Church – a link sent to me by my friend Joshua, containing a number of Lenten practices.

If you have information about other good sources of Lenten prayer, please feel free to share them in the comments to this post.