Last Friday, the kids and I met Mark at church for the fish fry dinner, then he took the three younger ones off to run errands while the 10-y-o and I stuck around to attend Stations of the Cross followed by Eucharistic Benediction. I pointed out that the booklet (it's the Liguori stations) contained the Stabat Mater in Latin as well as in parallel English translation, and out of the corner of my eye watched him happily flipping back and forth trying to make out the Latin as best he could. It's exactly the sort of thing I would have been doing as a ten-year-old, and I had to hide my smile.
My mind wanders terribly during these things, but a phrase from one of the Stations jumped out at me -- so to speak -- and I decided right there to take it as my Lenten theme. It's the ninth Station, "Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem:"
"...do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children."
I'm not sure exactly where that will take me, yet, but I think it will take me far in forty days.
* * *
My plans are modest. I'm hoping to make it to an hour of adoration twice a week during Lent -- just me -- using about two-thirds of what's usually my school-planning time. And I set some limits for myself on the computer, eliminating some of the extra time and also taking some of the stuff I usually read out of my RSS reader, with an eye towards serenity. Above that, I'm going to try tentatively giving up some items of food, but on a day-by-day basis. I swore off giving up food-type things for Lent a couple of years ago, because I felt it exacerbated my eating disorders, but I'm feeling stronger about those now and so I think I'm ready to give it a try again, but carefully. I also have some spiritual reading lined up.
So, not one big thing-to-do-every-day, but several small things that hopefully will add up to doing something every day.
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