Just realized Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day. I wonder how many will change their minds about giving up chocolate for Lent. Old Cape Cod was slammed with a February blizzard today, wet snow as heavy as cement. Ugh.
Well an interesting day, but after visiting the hospital I feel good to go! This flu is really, really something. I never got knocked over on my face like that before, it was as if I was punched. But my sister in law had it a couple of weeks ago and was off work for nine days, so it is certainly a bad one. I hope I can still get to Mass, but I doubt it really. It looks like I will be spending a lot of Lent in bed, no bad thing really to offer up. Perhaps it is because I am an old crank looking at the many people in the hospital waiting room , they looked so...well...rough. Or to put it another way far, far,far from God? How can I tell? I don't know I just can. A bad feeling. Only two people in the whole waiting room would I guess were Godly. Whilst waiting for the Emergency Doctor to ring me , sitting by my window I watched as three police cars pulled up outside with blue lights flashing. The young couple upstairs had been fighting again..and I do mean fighting. She did not press charges and the police escorted her to her car. To my amazement when I got back from the hospital her car was parked up again, so she went back to him again. Who knows?
I'm with Father Goring on trying to cut down on my smartphone usage for Lent. Not going complete cold turkey on it. I am going to physically turn off the phone overnight until maybe 9 or 10am in the morning.
I’m definitely cutting back on iPhone use this Lent. And some kind of bug is hitting me hard today, so something to offer up as Lent begins. I realize now it was starting yesterday and is why I was aching all over and exhausted at the Ash Wednesday TLM last night. I was too sore and exhausted to even attempt to kneel on the bare floors where the Mass was held. This book has sat on my shelf, unused, for too long now. Lent is a very good time to pull it back out and try again to make it a daily habit.
Lent is a time of grace, a time for conversion, a time to come home to God. ~ St. Maximilian Kolbe The picture and the quote caught my heart.
I haven't even heard of this book before, but if TAN books printed it it must be good. I hope indeed it is not the same bug I had, on one occasion I checked my bed in the morning and it was so wet from fever it looked like a bucket of water had been poured on it. One Ash Wednesday morning I could not make it to mass but made it in the evening, though I sat through it. Back to Mass this morning and was so improved I went over the mountains this afternoon. I would guess this was the sickest I have been in my life, certainly I have collapsed before, quite a dramatic experience. But a great entrance for Lent I think. The priest in his homily compared the 40 days of Lent to Jesus and the Disciples journeying to Jerusalem for His death. I never heard that said before. I always though of it as the 40 days in the desert. I should really have picked out a good book to read for Lent. I love Fulton Sheen. I might read , 'Treasure in clay ', again, he is a terrific story teller. I'd love to leave home for the forty days and tour about in the caravan but the weather is so awful. We'll see. 2 Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.
I pulled out the Ivermectin and just made a hot tea cocktail with it. If it worked for Covid, it will work on regular colds and flus. Plus I’ll be stocking up on peptobismol as bismuth is just as effective as ivermectin with Covid according to my friend who did the study and published about it in the medical literature.
It’s probably one of the best, if not the best, books of daily meditations on the spiritual life and mental prayer ever written. I’ve had it for about 20 years. I’ve gone through the vast majority of it over the years, but I don’t think I’ve successfully prayed with it every day for a year. But yes, it’s highly recommended.
I woke up this morning with a start remembering certain sins I committed 40 years ago and had totally forgotten . Regarding them with a kind of sick horror I turned to God in horror and shock and said a very sincere act of contrition. This is the trouble with having been a total evil bad boy for so long before my conversion for years and years I just totally lost track of it all. I feel this huge need to make a very,very good and deep General Confession . This will take very great courage and strength on my part as it will involve looking back into a total cesspit. To make things harder the only priests I know that would do this properly are Traditionalists and these priests certainly know how to make penitents sweat. But it is a must do. I happened to see a kind of check list of sins to go over so I may use something like this so I do not forget anything. This is really turning into the most incredible Lent of my life. On the one hand very challenging but on the other very liberating. Real light in really Dark places. I think falling so ill right at the start has been a big help. On a more positive note I notice from the scales I notice I have lost 4 pounds in weight since Lent started so that at least puts a smile in my face. Lead Kindly light, lead me on further into Lent. I am starting to wonder what will happen next?
