Lenten Prayer and the Holy Eucharist
The new evangelization, for which our Lenten observance renews and strengthens us, is, first of all, a work of prayer. Prayer draws us to Christ, to His Pierced Heart, from which we, in turn, draw the inspiration and courage to live in Christ in a culture which has grown forgetful of Him or has never known Him. Without prayer, our work of the new evangelization will utterly fail, for we cannot bring Christ to others, if we are not first in loving communication with Him in prayer and, above all, through participation in the Holy Eucharist. It is through prayer that we, first, draw others to Christ and assist them to know and love Him.
Lenten prayer teaches us to center all of our prayer in the Holy Eucharist, through which we are truly united with Christ in His Suffering and Dying. Through the Eucharistic Sacrifice, we come to know Christ most perfectly and have the fullest communion possible with Him on this earth. In the Holy Eucharist, Christ manifests to us, in the most wonderful way imaginable, the immeasurable love of God the Father for us. As Pope John Paul the Great reminded us, the Holy Eucharist makes one the Sacred Triduum of our Lord's Passion, Death and Resurrection, and our time.
In the Holy Eucharist, Christ not only manifests the love of God the Father but he also gives us the gift of Divine Love. It is the gift of God's love poured forth into our hearts which inspires and fortifies us to bring all our brothers and sisters to Christ and to the salvation which He alone has won for us.
Through our Lenten prayer, we discipline and train ourselves to live in the company of Christ throughout each day. Our Lenten prayer, in other words, forms us in a way of living which is a faithful expression of our encounter with Christ and our communion with Him in the Holy Eucharist.
Stations of the Cross
The Stations or Way of the Cross is a fundamental Lenten prayer. Through the praying of the Stations, we accompany our Lord along the way of His cruel Passion and Death. As we meditate briefly at each of the stops or stations along the way to Calvary, we ponder what it meant for our Lord Jesus to take our human flesh, to suffer and to die for love of us. The Stations of the Cross open up for us, in a most concrete manner, the immensity of God's love for us. It is helpful to recall that this venerable Lenten prayer has its origin in the pilgrimage of Christians to Jerusalem, in order to walk, in prayer, the very way by which our Lord won our salvation. Since many Christians are unable to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the Church developed the Way of the Cross over the centuries, so that all Christians can mystically make pilgrimage to the places of our Lord's Suffering and Dying.
Praying the Stations means identifying ourselves with Christ in His Suffering and Dying. As we stop to pray at each station, we see the reflection of our own life in Christ. The Way of the Cross is our way of life, our way to eternal life. In a particular way, this most venerated prayer of the Church helps us to understand and embrace the mystery of suffering in our lives, as our Lord Jesus embraced the mystery of His Passion and Death. Meditating on the individual station, we pray that we may follow Christ by pouring out our lives in selfless love of God and of our neighbor.
I urge you to take part in the public praying of the Way of the Cross in your parish during Lent. A plenary indulgence is granted to those who participate in this public devotion, under the usual conditions. Also, when possible, make a visit to your parish church to walk the Way of the Cross with our Lord, using one of the many excellent booklets for praying the Stations or simply speaking to our Lord in your words. When you are unable to pray the Stations in church, it is also possible to pray them at home, using the images of the stations in your book of prayers.
The Holy Rosary
The Rosary is another fundamental from of Lenten prayer. When we pray the Rosary, we go to the side of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus and our Blessed Mother, to contemplate with her the mysteries of our salvation. The repeated praying of the Hail Mary focuses our attention on the great mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation, that is the sending of God the Son in our human flesh to suffer and die for our salvation, to which all of the mysteries point and in which they all find their fulfillment.
When we pray through the intercession of our Blessed Mother, she always leads us to her Divine Son, to a more perfect knowledge of Him and to a more faithful love and service of Him. When we pray the Rosary, we are like the wine stewards at the Wedding Feast of Cana, who go to the Mother of Jesus to seek help in their need. She, in response, sends us to Jesus with the confident instruction: "Do whatever He tells you" (Jn 2:5). In our Lenten praying of the Rosary, we, with Mary, go to Jesus and He tells us: "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me" (Lk 9:23).
The praying of the Rosary prepares us to participate in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, for it opens our minds and hearts in wonder before the mystery of Christ's life poured out for us in the Holy Mass. The devotion of the Rosary disposes us to "active participation" in the Holy Mass. At the same time, the Rosary helps us to bring forth faithfully the fruit of our communion with our Lord throughout the minutes and hours of our daily living. Meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, we return throughout the day to the great mystery of our life in Christ, thanks to His Death on Calvary, which He unfailingly makes present for us in the offering of the Holy Mass: "This is My Body which will be given up for you… This is the cup of My Blood, the Blood of the new and eternal covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven" (Roman Missal).
Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving
The praying of the Stations of the Cross and of the Holy Rosary inspires our Lenten fasting, the discipline of our use of food and other material goods, in accord with our identity in Christ. Our Lenten prayer helps us to avoid the temptation to fast as a merely external observance without the deeply interiorly desire to become more Christ-like, to radiate His love in the world.
These premier Lenten prayers also are the inspiration of our almsgiving. Contemplating the way of our Lord's Passion and Death, and all the mysteries which find their fulfillment in His Suffering and Dying, we are led to acts of selfless love. Our Lenten prayer, if it is sincere, leads us to sacrifice our selves, to give from our very substance to help our brothers and sisters in most need.
