Pastoral Letter: On the Observance of the Holy Season of Lent

This is a Pastoral Letter from Archbishop Raymond L Burke:

On Ash Wednesday, Feb. 21, the Church throughout the world begins her annual observance of the Season of Lent. During Lent, we go with Christ into the desert to be fortified in our relationship of love of God and one another. By more intense prayer, fasting and almsgiving, we are fortified in our love and more generous in our love. Lent is the annual time of strong grace for renewal in the Christian life through more intense prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2007 Lenten Message, invites us to recognize in the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus the sign of God’s love for us, His thirst "for the love of every one of us." May our Lenten observance lead us to Christ, to His open Heart, to receive in abundance the gift of God’s love, so that we, in turn, may bring God’s love to our neighbors, especially those most in need. May we follow the exhortation of our Holy Father to make Lent, above all, "a Eucharistic time in which, welcoming the love of Jesus, we learn to spread it around us with every word and deed."

During Holy Mass on Ash Wednesday, the blessed ashes will be imposed on our foreheads in the form of the Cross. The imposition of ashes reminds us that, through the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, we receive the grace to purify our hearts of sin.

I urge you to unite your heart with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the Heart of Christ in His unfailing love of God and neighbor by taking up with new enthusiasm and energy the Lenten spiritual practices: daily Mass, if possible; the regular confession of sins in the Sacrament of Penance; and the praying of the Stations of the Cross and the rosary.

All Catholics are asked to abstain from eating meat and to fast, in accord with Church discipline and their personal ability to do so. Through these and other forms of discipline, let us purify our hearts for a more generous and selfless love of others and a more faithful stewardship of our world.

I invoke God’s blessing upon you and your home, with the prayer that God will bless abundantly your observance of the holy Season of Lent.

Yours devotedly in Christ,
(Most Rev.) Raymond L. Burke
Archbishop of St. Louis