Thinking about penance and almsgiving! Charity is better than giving up chocolate!

Meet Fifi LaFoo!

This Lent I'm thinking about penance and almsgiving in a new way. After a homily last Sunday about the Lent's focus being about charity not suffering, I've decided to do penance and almsgiving a little differently. I will still be avoiding sweets and between meal snacks (I'm not much of a snacker anyway.), but I will focus on acts of charity. Sometimes those are harder than skipping the glass of wine or the chocolate bar. And giving up your time to serve someone difficult can certainly be a penance.

Almsgiving is taking on a different look too. Mother Teresa used to talk about the loneliness of many souls and their need for love. I've mentioned my sister, Jeanne, before who is in deteriorating health in a nursing home in Frederick, MD. It's a round trip of over three hours to travel from the Valley for a visit. And I confess, I'm not one of those folks who loves to hop in the car and take a drive. Nevertheless, my husband and I have embraced that trip for Lent increasing our visits from about once a month to once a week instead. We pray several rosaries which makes the trip fulfill all three Lenten practices. It's not an easy visit since my sister is depressed and often hostile and angry. It shows in her treatment of both family and staff. And I confess that I have often let Jeanne's mood and ill treatment infect me with resentment and impatience. Mea culpa. That's when I need to remember that feelings need to be under the control of the intellect and the will, something with which I've struggled all my life.

Sunday Meditation: "Take up your cross and follow me."

The Carthusian martyrs of England joyfully accepted martyrdom. St. Thomas More seeing them  from his own prison cell wrote to his daughter Margaret, “these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to a marriage." (Source)

My friend and colleague, Dexter Duggan, reported in last week's Wanderer on Cardinal Raymond  Burke's address to Catholic Health Care Workers in Phoenix, AZ. His comments on suffering seem especially poignant during this month dedicated to the suffering souls in Purgatory.