Bishop O’Connell’s Message for Lent 2024 ∙ Lenten regulations 

BISHOP DAVID M. O’CONNELL, C.M., HAS SHARED THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE for Lent 2024.
Lent is traditionally a time for prayer and fasting. This year, I am especially drawn to these words from my reading: “Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. So, if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others, you open God’s ear to yourself.”

They are the words of St. Peter Chrysologus, one of the Church Fathers who lived in the late fourth and early fifth centuries (Sermon 43: PL 52, 320, 322), and are found in the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of Hours for Tuesday of the third week of Lent. Pope Benedict XVI also quoted them in his Lenten Message 2009.

St. Teresa of Calcutta once remarked, “As Lent is the time for greater love, listen to Jesus’ thirst… ‘Repent and believe’ Jesus tells us. What are we to repent? Our indifference, our hardness of heart. What are we to believe? Jesus thirsts even now, in your heart and in the poor. He knows your weakness. He wants only your love, wants only the chance to love you.”
Read the full message HERE.
 

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During the days and weeks of penance that lie ahead — from Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024, until Holy Thursday morning, March 28, 2024 — the Catholic Church throughout the world commemorates the penitential season of Lent ending with the Sacred Triduum of Holy Week. The model Jesus gave us for “these 40 days” was his own experience in the desert and the temptations that followed him there where he encountered Satan face to face. And yet, Jesus, there in the desert — alone, fasting and in intense prayer — beat back the devil and triumphed over temptation, as strong and as unrelenting as it was throughout those 40 days.

We enter the desert of Lent like Jesus, led by the Holy Spirit, to face our devils, our temptations head on.  But we are not alone. The Lord Jesus Christ is with us. And so, too, is the Church, the entire community of faith observing Lent.

Read the Lenten requirements HERE.