February 14th, is Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting, and the beginning of Lent. Lent is a six-week period of conversion and penance to prepare ourselves by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, for the great celebration of Easter Sunday and the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ on March 31st this year.
Today’s
Ash Wednesday Masses with Distribution of Ashes is at 9:00 AM and 5:30 PM at
Our Lady of Lourdes in Calif. City, and at 6:30 PM at St. Joseph’s in Boron.
Starting
on Thursday, February 15th, we are beginning a six-week Lenten Parish Retreat
with particular focus on the Holy Eucharist, under the theme of “Given for
You.” Every Thursday evening, after the 5:30 PM Mass, Adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament, with Confessions and Benediction, will be held in the OLL church.
Fridays
are days of abstinence, and at 5:30 PM Stations of the Cross in English are held at OLL and at SJM in Boron. Stations in Spanish at OLL are at 7:00 PM.
On
Tuesdays during Lent, after the 5:30 PM Mass, a talk will be given by Dibby
Green on how the Hebrew & Jewish Scriptures, their Liturgy, and Messianic hope
is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, with special reference to the Eucharist “given
for you.” The same talk will be repeated Wednesday mornings after the 9:00 AM
Mass.
The
theme for this first week (Feb. 15 to 21) is, “The Riches Hidden in Christ.”
Guides
for the entire week, and handouts summarizing the talks with the Scripture
references, will be available each week, and posted on the Parish website –
ollcalcity.org.
In
preparation for Lent, these articles have looked at the life of St. Antony the
Great of Egypt (AD 251-356). This sixth and last article briefly summarizing
the remainder of Antony’s life. It was fitting for us to take a few weeks to
learn of St. Antony as he has been a spiritual master to all Christians of the
necessity of asceticism and fleeing the world, the flesh, and the devil for the
sake of the Kingdom of God.
Never
satisfied with any progress, Antony often sought greater challenges to deepen
his conversion and his union with Christ. When he was 35 he went deeper into
the Egyptian deserts. He found an old abandoned Roman fort and strictly
enclosed himself there for the next 20 years. An acquaintance threw food to him
over the wall, and he would return back the product of his work to support
himself (typically, weaving mats and braiding palm leaves, never letting
himself be idle).
St.
Antony thus became the Father and Patriarch of Monks and Monasteries; however,
he never organized them. People would simply come to follow his example of a
solitary, ascetical life.
In
times of Roman persecution and execution of Christians (AD 311-312), and later
when the Church was troubled by the Arian heresy (AD 338) denying the divinity
of Christ, Antony came out of the desert, even going into Alexandria, to
support the Christians in their witness to the Truth. But otherwise, he
continued to seek the solitude of the Egyptian desert. At age 105, Antony died
on January 17, 356.
Lent is an appropriate time to reflect on St. Antony. It is a time of penance and asceticism, of denial of ourselves, and of growing in charity towards God and others. We ask his intercession before God that all Christians might be more deeply converted this Lent, and that our world might come to find Christ’s peace.
Dibby Allan Green