ASH WEDNESDAY
Dear Family,
This week we begin Lent with Ash Wednesday. Before I go farther, I want to recommend you check out
<http://www.catholic.org/clife/lent/ashwed.php> That’s the site for Catholic Online. I thought their treatment of Ash Wednesday was great and worth your time.

Basically we enter into a period of prayer and reflection to ready ourselves once again for the celebration of the great Easter feast, the feast of our Redemption from the effects of sin. We had been cut off and through His loving sacrifice of life, Jesus restored our access to the Father and eternal life. That surely is worth our time and prayer and reflection.

If you don’t count the Sundays of Lent, which is a breathing time each week, we have 40 days in Lent that remind us of the time Jesus himself spent in the desert getting ready for his mission.

Dear Family,
Today you received a little packet of “kindness” cards. I’m hoping we explained the idea behind them during the homily. Basically, you do some kind act for someone and then give them the card and ask them to do something for someone else and pass along the card.

We picked today to launch the idea because today’s readings seemed very well-suited to illustrate the idea, especially Corinthians. Brides and grooms have been picking this passage for their weddings because it talks all about love, 15 things, in fact, that love either is or isn’t.

ArchBishop’s Charities and Development
Keep up your great generosity. The rest of the Church needs us!
Dear Family,
Each day and each week seems fuller than the last one. That’s life at St. Sebastian’s, especially between Thanksgiving and Easter. All our birds are coming home to nest; sunbirds maintaining the nest yearround, snowbirds helping with redecoration, visiting and cruising peacocks adding color to the aviary, and then of course, the rarely sighted but always appreciated emus who pop in at Christmas and
Easter.

Jamuary...

Dear Family,
No, that’s not a typo. It really does say Jamuary, because we are – jammed!  Fortunately, we have a crackerjack staff who find toast on which to spread the mixture. Don’t count me in among the quick-to-respond; I just get to bask in the glow of the results.

I suppose it works that way in many places… people doing things behind the scenes that few know about, but still everyone expects results without knowing much about how the results result. I know there is a homily in here somewhere, but I have to figure it for myself before I can pass it along. My immediate personal bottom line is to spend a bit more than a little time in prayer today thanking God for the people with whom I work. You are especially grateful when for one reason or another they might not be here.