Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday 2021: The One Thing that Gets People to Run to Church, and they Ruin It

Tell me any other day of the year that has no obligation to attend Mass that gets as high an attendance as Ash Wednesday? The success of Ash Wednesday to create favorable desire to go to Church should be lauded, right? So popular is it, that other denominations have been imitating it and having their…

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Ignoring the “Fast” Track: Has Traditional Lent observance become optional?

Ash Wednesday is upon us. The day is not so important as its symbolism as the entryway into the great time of penance. We go forth gird with fasting and abstinence into the Lenten season, foreheads marked with a cross of the dust to which we shall return at journey’s end. Solemn stuff. It is a…

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Shades of Grey

The Lakeview neighborhood is an attractive area of Chicago’s north side. It seems as if it had always been a popular part of town. Though I didn’t realize it at the time we were dating, my future wife lived on Pine Grove and Diversey–the same street and block where Charlie Chaplin lived 80 years earlier. Typical of the last…

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Ash Wednesday–Station at S. Sabina

The traditional devotion of the Roman Lenten Stations (or the Stational Churches of Rome), allows us to unite our hearts and minds in our Lenten devotions with the Church of Rome as we spiritually visit the ancient churches and basilicas of the City (Stationalium Ecclesiarum Urbis visitatio). For your devotional life this Lent, consider making…

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