Every year, I help plan and host a huge Catholic men's conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's always the first Saturday of Lent. It's great. It's like a gathering of a thousand of my Catholic brothers. I wouldn't miss it for the world.
I missed it this year.
The kids decided to have a little outdoor picnic while I was working in the pig pasture last weekend, rebuilding the fence. Here's what I learned. If you're working in the pig pasture and one of your kids hands you a peanut butter sandwich ... do not eat it.
I learned this Lent how you get salmonella poisoning.
I also learned why that pig pasture mud was so hard to wash off my hands. (It wasn't mud.)
These were some great days to practice fasting and mortification. When God hands you lemons, right?
In short, it was the perfect way to start Lent.
By the way, here is my first entry to an ongoing Catholic Dad Journal. God teaches us dads a lot of lessons. I figured that I should start writing them down, to remember them, and to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.
Here are some other articles I have written that might help jump start your Lent, assuming you don't want to practice the Salmonella Option.
- Why Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving in Lent? Here are the Biblical roots of these Lenten practices. These three connect the threefold original sin that occurred when Adam & Eve ate that fruit and Jesus' three temptations in the desert.
- Resolve to Confess More this Lent! That phrasing may be a bit awkward, but you get it. Here is a Catholic Confession Guide with a confession how-to and script, plus examination of consciences. Here is also a guide to defending Confession explaining its Biblical roots. Be prepared next time when somebody whines ... "but why do I have to confess my sins to a priest?"
- Good Friday: Lastly, here's a nugget to get you excited about the Easter Triduum, too. Golgotha is the place of the skull, right? But have you ever wondered whose skull?
Also, be looking out for next week's post. I put together a bunch of quotes from Cardinal Robert Sarah.
Here's praying and (willingly/unwillingly) sacrificing that you have a great Lent!
Yours in Christ,
Scott
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