Thursday, March 28, 2013

The Triduum begins: Reflections on Lent 2013

And so the Paschal Triduum begins, and another Lent comes to an end. This is one of my very favorite times in the liturgical year. I'd love to go to the Holy Thursday Mass tonight, but I doubt that will happen with my needy daughter. However, tomorrow I am off from work and I have 3 Good Friday liturgies/activities to choose from at our parish: Morning prayer, the traditional 3 pm service, and/or Stations of the Cross. Right now, I'm thinking the 3 pm service. And then I can do stations privately later with Henry.

So, how did everyone's Lent go this year? I will give a recounting of mine here.

I had a beautiful Lent. I'll be honest: the Liturgy of the Hours got the best of me again. I love, LOVE this prayer, but dragging the thick books with me every morning and evening to and from work meant that sometimes I forgot them. And often evening prayer didn't happen just based on family needs of my time. So, once again I started off strong with this resolution, and petered out. I did, however, reignite my old subscription to Magnificat to try this out again. Magnificat does not include the official morning and evening prayers from the LOTH, but it does have an informal morning/evening prayer included, and it's small enough to tuck into my purse. I also always loved the daily saint stories they include, and it includes all the Mass readings and other devotions. I signed up for a 6 month subscription so that I can try it out. If I use it, then I'll renew for a much longer period. So, in the end, I think I reached a happy place in adding to my daily prayer life. My first issue will be for May.

Here are some other positives from Lent 2013: I was much more prayerful this Lent. I appreciated and recited my rosary with vigor each day. I'm currently praying a novena to Our Lady Undoer of Knots and enjoying the heck out of it. I'm going to pray the Divine Mercy novena that will begin on Good Friday as well. Also, Henry and I kept up our resolution to pray a decade of the rosary together each night *extremely* well. The only days we missed were the few times I wasn't home at his bedtime. And on some of those (Mike and I out on a date night) my mom did the rosary with him. He enjoyed it so much that he told me he wants to continue doing it even once Lent is over, so we're going to keep going. I may see if he wants to up it to 2 decades a night. Right now, we do 1 decade and then we each choose a prayer to recite from his little St. Joseph prayer book. We'll see. I really love this new tradition we've established and I'm looking forward to adding Anne in when she's older.

As well, this was a momentous Lent, with Benedict XVI resigning and Pope Francis being elected. Lots of prayer time involved there. And I kept up with EWTN, watching various liturgies, that I otherwise wouldn't have invested the time in. Due to the Conclave, I established a very happy Catholic home on Twitter and am still keeping up with that daily.

This has been a very blessed Lent, and I'm so, SO looking forward to the Easter season!

I'll blog again on Easter Monday with a full recounting. We'll all attend Mass at 8 am Sunday morning, and we're having our parents and my grandmother over for dinner that evening. I'm looking forward, and I hope that you all have a prayerful Triduum and a beautiful Easter Sunday!

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