The feast of Tabernacles Sukkoth was one of the great celebrations of the Jewish liturgical calendar at the time of Jesus as it is today It was celebrated as an autumn harvest festival and people built little booths or tents that recalled the way they had dwelt during their wilderness wandering

For Christ, while we were still godless, died at the appointed time for the ungodly (Rom. 5:6)

As a diptych to the story of the temptation of Jesus the Transfiguration is always proclaimed on the Second Sunday of Lent The title masks its deeper meaning since the earliest English use of quot transfiguration quot is for the feast and the word rarely appears in quot secular quot discours

Lent developed backwards from a celebration of the paschal triduum when the catechumens were baptized and admitted to the Eucharist The Good Friday and Easter Vigil fast was gradually extended to a 40-day fast and after the conversion of the Roman Empire with the decline of adult baptism the se

As a newly ordained priest I was working with a military chaplain at a base in Germany As we prepared for Ash Wednesday he told me not to distribute the ashes after the homily the usual time but to wait until the end of Mass In his experience great numbers would come to church simply for the as

Lent is about to dawn and today rsquo s readings are a wake-up call Even on a bleak February day the readings are suffused with images of light Twice the prophet of Second Isaiah tells the people that their light shall break forth like the dawn or rise in the darkness It is not the light of vic