This is father Charles Sikorsky, president of Divine Mercy University, and I'd like to wish you and your loved ones a blessed and fruitful Lenten season.
Lent is this time that we have this opportunity each year to help us grow closer to our lord and to identify more and more with our lord and his passion, his cross, and his death, and unite ourselves to his sufferings, on the cross.
And I think it's very appropriate to have this season every year.
There's so much suffering in the world, and we see it every day on the news, whether it's war, whether it's family crisis, whether it's people, you know, suffering and and dying, the sick and suffering.
So many different people suffering out there.
And so it's a time for us to look inward, but also look outwards.
Look inward to help us to grow closer to our lord, but also to be of service to others.
The church, of course, is traditionally recommended three ways we can, live our Lenten season, and I would just invite you to consider each of those ways.
And those, of course, are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
And a time for us during this Lenten season to grow in prayer, whether it be spending more time in our personal prayer each day, looking for opportunities maybe to do some some things we don't ordinarily do, maybe going to daily mass one or more times each week.
It could be praying the rosary or praying a decade of the rosary each day just to try to develop that devotion to Mary better, or it could be praying the divine mercy chaplet.
It's a great way to remind ourselves of the passion and also God's mercy, the reason why he died for us.
So prayer is one of the ways we can grow, spiritually during Lent.
Second, fasting.
And oftentimes, we think of fasting, you know, of giving up, Coca Cola or sweets or, you know, chocolate, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But I would also encourage you to think about maybe other kinds of sacrifices that forms a self denial that can really help us help us form better habits and help us form a bigger heart.
For example, you know, maybe giving up certain things that are dear to us at a time, maybe watching our favorite TV show or sports, spending more time with our loved ones.
Right?
Talking to them a little bit more each day.
You know, fasting from social media or for parts of social media in the news.
Just making time for God.
You know, living silence requires a lot of self sacrifice.
So different ways we can fast.
And then finally, alms giving.
Giving alms to those who are less fortunate than we are, whether it's the poor, whether victims of of war, there's human trafficking, there's domestic violence.
So many people really suffering out there today and just looking for ways we can help them help them and unite ourselves with them.
And in that way, we grow, and and really can live the cross with Christ, accompanying our lord by accompanying others who are suffering as he is.
And so prayer, fasting, almsgiving, right, the three primary ways we can live our land to help us grow closer to our lord.
And I think doing that though above all, just that spirit of wanting to become more and more like Christ, wanting to identify with him, wanting to, unite our sacrifices, our crosses, our sufferings to the mystery of Christ's cross and his suffering and his death.
And as we pray for Holy Week, keeping that in mind is our ultimate goal.
By doing that, we really, I think, grow significantly in our spiritual life to really understand who we're called to be, to learn to love our lord more, and then also be better, instruments to to spread the gospel and to spread the love, the mercy, the goodness of Jesus Christ to so many souls who so desperately need it, here in our world today.
So just in closing, please be assured of my prayers for you and your loved ones during this Lenten season.
And I'd ask you to please pray for me and pray for our Divine Mercy University community here.
Our students who are working so hard, our faculty and staff who do so much, sacrificial work to support them.
So pray for us and we'll be praying for you.
Thank you and God bless you.