I've read a couple of blog entries on the Ash Wednesday MassFlash mob that seemed to think the spectacle was cute. It wasn't. The purpose of Mass is adoration, thanksgiving, petition, and reparation..Anything else no matter how "charming" or "relevant" is just straw for gold.
Hilary White, one of my favorite bloggers has cancer. In your charity please pray for her. She's a peppery and tough woman but this is a hard blow.
In Texas a pack of 20 boys and adult males raped an 11 year old girl. I realize that there are men who hate women and some of them have good reasons. I have an uncle whose treacherous wife divorced him right after she graduated from college and left him with nothing but a few pieces of furniture that he owned before the marriage. She took the kids, found their care to be too much for her gave them back to him but he still has to pay her alimony. I realize that the feminist movement unleashed horrors that we can't put back in the box. I have an inkling of understanding of what it must be like for most black boys raised by a young and foolish single mother who was herself probably ill used by an older man. The most dangerous person in a kid's life is his mom's new man. That new man may last a weekend or he may hang around abusing the kids for years. This is so common that cops and CPS workers call it mommy's boyfriend syndrome. And I know our society is so busy cheering on the single mom (You go, girl!) that there seems to be no place for the adult survivors of mom's boyfriends to vent. All that is true and terrible but why, oh why take all that rage out on an eleven year old girl?
Lord have mercy. St. Maria Goretti, St. Germaine, St. Dymphna, Blessed Alexandrina, Blessed Karolina Kozkowna, and Blessed Albertina pray for this poor child. St. John Bosco, St. Dominic Salvo and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati pray for all the angry, neglected boys who think that women are the enemy. Oh Blessed Virgin, be their example of womanhood!
This lad has decided to fast all Lent on just beer. Bless his heart. I hope someone gets a photo of what he loooks like by Easter.
This Lent I'm going to do a devotion that I'd never even heard of before. I'm reading the seven penitential psalms every day.