MARCH 11, 2025 • ARCHGH.ORG/TCH
texas catholic herald 1
ST. JOSEPH ALTAR TRADITION
CRS LENTEN RECIPES RETURN
Altar devotion highlights Sicilian faith, St. Joseph
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Celebrating 60 years of Catholic news in Texas
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MARCH 11, 2025
VOL. 61, NO. 18
LET US JOURNEY TOGETHER IN HOPE BY POPE FRANCIS Special to the Herald We begin our annual pilgrimage of Lent in faith and hope with the penitential rite of the imposition of ashes. The Church, our mother and teacher, invites us to open our hearts to God’s grace, so that we can celebrate with great joy the paschal victory of Christ the Lord over sin and death, which led St. Paul to exclaim: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:54-55). Indeed, Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the heart of our faith and the pledge of our hope in the Father’s great promise, already fulfilled in His beloved Son: life eternal (cf. Jn 10:28; 17:3).
LIVING LENT
Embracing the Jubilee This Lent, as we share in the grace of the Jubilee Year, I would like to propose a few reflections on what it means to journey together in hope, and on the summons to conversion that God in His mercy addresses to all of us, as individuals and as a community. First of all, to journey. The Jubilee motto, “Pilgrims of Hope,” evokes the lengthy journey of the people of Israel to the Promised Land, as recounted in the Book of Exodus. This arduous path from slavery to freedom was willed and guided by the Lord, who loves His people and remains ever faithful to them. It is hard to think of the biblical exodus without also thinking of those of our brothers and sisters who in our own day are fleeing situations of misery and violence in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones. A first call to conversion thus comes from the realization that all of us are pilgrims in this life; each of us is invited to stop and ask how our lives reflect this fact. Am I really on a journey, or am I standing still, not moving, either immobilized by fear and hopelessness or reluctant to See LENT, on page 2
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CNS PHOTO
Michelangelo’s Pietà, which depicts a grieving Blessed Mother holding her Son Jesus Christ after His death, is seen in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.
Mary: The perfect Lenten companion BY ROBERT FASTIGGI Special to the Herald HOUSTON (OSV News) — The season of Lent directs us to recall our own Baptism and prepare for the celebration of the paschal mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. It is a time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and it helps us grow closer to Jesus. In celebrating Lent and in every season of the liturgical year, it is good to recall the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the “Church honors with special love the Blessed Mary, Mother of God, who is joined by an inseparable
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bond to the saving work of her Son.” “In her,” the council fathers wrote,“the Church holds up and admires the most excellent fruit of the redemption, and joyfully contemplates, as in a faultless image that which she herself desires and hopes wholly to be” (“Sacrosanctum Concilium,” No. 103). Mary is the perfect companion for Lent, and Lent is a perfect time to deepen our love, knowledge and veneration of the Mother of God. Lent is also a season of conversion, and here, too, we receive great help from Mary, who, as the Mother of Mercy, points us to her divine Son, Jesus Christ, who came into
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the world to reconcile sinners to Himself (cf. Lk 5:31-32). In his general audience on Ash Wednesday in 2014, Pope Francis highlighted the special protection and help of the Blessed Virgin for the journey of Lent: “On this journey, we want to invoke with special trust the protection and help of the Virgin Mary: May she, who was the first to believe in Christ, accompany us in our days of intense prayer and penance, so that we might come to celebrate, purified and renewed in spirit, the great paschal See MARY, on page 6
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