Alligator meat is permissible to eat on Fridays of Lent, the archbishop of New Orleans assured a conscientious parishioner, and his approval has been backed by the national bishops’ conference.
“Concerning the question if alligator is acceptable to eat during the Lenten season…yes, the alligator is considered in the fish family,” Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond wrote in a letter provided by the New Orleans archdiocese.
Pope Francis continued his rock star turn yesterday by breaking with tradition and publicly confessing his sins while leading a penitential liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The pope, dressed in a simple white alb and purple stole, spent about three minutes kneeling before the priest’s open confessional and received absolution.
Editor’s note: There’s nothing “groundbreaking” about a Catholic going to Confession – especially during Lent.
New Orleans, La., Feb 15, 2013 / 04:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Alligator is permissible to eat on Fridays of Lent, the archbishop of New Orleans assured a conscientious parishioner, and his approval has been backed by the national bishops’ conference.
“Concerning the question if alligator is acceptable to eat during the Lenten season…yes, the alligator is considered in the fish family,” Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond wrote in a 2010 letter provided to CNA by the New Orleans archdiocese Feb. 15.
A bunch of things kids can make, print and accessorize in order to make Lent more practical and fruitful.
Given tomorrow’s Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, the provision of Canon 1251 nullifies the obligation of abstinence from meat.
Perhaps it is good that we look at just a few texts which reference “the flesh” and thus here in Lent learn more of the flesh and its ways. This will help us to be on our guard and to rebuke it by God’s grace and learn not to feed it. I make some comments in red with each quote.
It is the number Forty that the Church now brings before us: – a number, as Saint Jerome observes, which denotes punishment and affliction [In Ezechiel, cap. xxix].
Let us remember the forty days and forty nights of the Deluge (Gen. vii. 12), sent by God in his anger, when he repented that he had made man, and destroyed the whole human race, with the exception of one family. Let us consider how the Hebrew people, in punishment for their ingratitude, wandered forty years in the desert, before they were permitted to enter the Promised Land [Num. xiv. 33]. Let us listen to our God commanding the Prophet Ezechiel to lie forty days on his right side, as a figure of the siege, which was to bring destruction on Jerusalem [Ezech. iv. 6].
A few simple recommendations:
Follow our Lenten calendar. Make Fridays, perhaps even Wednesday, your days to fast.
Start slowly – no meat. Then extend this to a low carbohydrate/ low fat day with water, a small piece of fish, honey on whole grain bread, a spinach salad with olive oil and a touch of vinegar.
Drink water over coffee, soda, or fruit drinks. If you need something else, or your caffeine headache is kicking in, the answer is tea. Try green tea as the primary choice followed by herbal teas or fruit teas such as lemon tea, hot apple spice or chamomile.
Remember prayer time in the morning to set the right priorities. Start the day right and you will finish right. A little walk in the evening or even midday will ward off those urges for sweets.
The truth is, fasting is extremely healthy for the body if the fast is not extreme. By that I mean not performed for days or weeks at a time.
Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday, is a time of personal penance and conversion.
During this 40-day period, Catholics typically fast and abstain from various foods, as well as certain activities, while adopting other traditional practices, with the general intention of:
1) Honoring Jesus Christ’s perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world.
2) Advancing in our own personal struggle against the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
3) Helping to make the world a bit more like Heaven.
Cutting back on television and other forms of popular entertainment, while meditating more frequently on the birth, public life, and Passion of Jesus Christ, we hope to better appreciate all that God does for us, and greatly benefit from the example of the only perfect human ever to walk the earth.
Fasting and abstaining from certain foods, we soon begin to reassert a certain mastery over the desires of our flesh.
Shortly confronted by what should now be an obvious “hole” in our normal, everyday schedule, we prudently “fill” that time with prayer.
Praying … we strive to hear the voice of God.
What is that “voice” telling us?
Listen frequently (and very carefully) over the next 40 days and 40 nights, and then you’ll know.
It doesn’t get much simpler than that!
FATHER, all-powerful and ever-living God,
During the Holy Season of Lent
You call us to a closer union with Yourself.
Help me to prepare to celebrate
The Paschal Mystery
With mind and heart renewed.
Give me a spirit of loving reverence
For You, our Father,
And of willing service to my neighbor.
As I recall the great events
That gave us new life in Christ,
Bring the image of Your Son
To perfection within my soul.
This great season of grace is Your gift
To Your family to renew us in spirit.
Give me strength to purify my heart,
To control my desires,
And so to serve You in freedom,
Teach me how to live
In this passing world with my heart set
On the world that will never end.
I ask for the grace
To master my sinfulness
And conquer my pride.
I want to show to those in need
Your goodness to me by being kind to all.
Through my observance of Lent,
Help me to correct my faults
And raise my mind to You,
And thus grow in holiness
That I may deserve
The reward of everlasting life.
In Your mercy grant me this special favor
[name a special intention]
The days of the life-giving Death
And glorious Resurrection of Jesus Christ,
Your Son, are approaching.
This is the hour
When He triumphed over Satan’s pride,
The time when we celebrate
The great event of our Redemption.
The Suffering and Death of Your Son
Brought life to the whole world,
Moving our hearts to praise Your glory.
The power of the Cross reveals
Your judgment on this world
And the kingship of Christ crucified.
Father, through His love for us
And through His Sufferings, Death and Resurrection,
May I gain eternal life with You in heaven.
For those who do sacrifice to get closer to God, what matters is effort, not perfection, said the Rev. Michael Watson of St. Andrew Parish, a Catholic church in Upper Arlington.
“Because we’re prone to human weakness from time to time, it doesn’t mean the end of the world,” he said.
Slipping up is not a sin unless the action you committed is itself a sin, he said.
So if you swore off alcohol and had one cocktail, that’s not a sin. But if you had five and got drunk, you probably committed the sin of immoderation, whether it’s Lent or not.
People who slip sometimes tell the Rev. Jerry Rodenfels of the Church of the Resurrection in New Albany, as if they have to confess their misdeeds.
He tells them “not to worry. It’s not a sin,” he said. But they still feel bad.
“For those of us who are older, there’s something instilled in us called Catholic guilt,” Rodenfels said, laughing.
Churchgoers also debate whether they can “cheat” on Sundays, because those days technically aren’t included in the 40 days of Lent.
The priests say you can. Sunday is, as Rodenfels called it, a “free” day.
That’s because Sunday is the weekly joyful celebration of Christ’s resurrection, said Leo Madden, a professor of theology at Ohio Dominican University.
“It is incompatible for a period of time marked by sacrifice to occur at the same time,” Madden said. “Technically speaking, Sunday is not a day of Lent.”
This is a response from the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments about this question. Enjoy.
The emphases are mine:
Prot. N. 569/00/L
March 14, 2000
Dear Father:
This Congregation for Divine Worship has received your letter sent by fax in which you ask whether it is in accord with liturgical law to remove the Holy Water from the fonts for the duration of the season of Lent.
This Dicastery is able to respond that the removing of Holy Water from the fonts during the season of Lent is not permitted, in particular, for two reasons:
1. The liturgical legislation in force does not foresee this innovation, which in addition to being praeter legem is contrary to a balanced understanding of the season of Lent, which though truly being a season of penance, is also a season rich in the symbolism of water and baptism, constantly evoked in liturgical texts.
2. The encouragement of the Church that the faithful avail themselves frequently of the [sic] of her sacraments and sacramentals is to be understood to apply also to the season of Lent. The “fast” and “abstinence” which the faithful embrace in this season does not extend to abstaining from the sacraments or sacramentals of the Church. The practice of the Church has been to empty the Holy Water fonts on the days of the Sacred Triduum in preparation of the blessing of the water at the Easter Vigil, and it corresponds to those days on which the Eucharist is not celebrated (i.e., Good Friday and Holy Saturday).
Hoping that this resolves the question and with every good wish and kind regard, I am,
Sincerely yours in Christ,
[signed]
Mons. Mario Marini [Later, the Secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, now with God.]
Undersecretary
by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Ph.D., D.D., LL.D., Litt.D.
There are certain things in life which are too beautiful to be forgotten, such as the Love of a mother. Hence we treasure her picture. The Love of soldiers who Sacrificed themselves for their country is likewise too beautiful to be forgotten, hence we revere their memory on Memorial Day. But the greatest Blessing which ever came to this Earth was the visitation of the Son of God in the Form and Habit of Man. His Life, above all lives, is too beautiful to be forgotten, hence we treasure the Divinity of His Words in Sacred Scripture, and the Charity of His Deeds in our daily actions. Unfortunately this is all some Souls remember, namely His Words and His Deeds; important as these are, they are not the greatest characteristic of the Divine Savior.
The most Sublime Act in the History of Christ was His Death. Death is always important, for it seals a Destiny. Any Dying Man is a Scene. Any dying Scene is a Sacred Place. That is why the great literature of the past which has touched on the Emotions surrounding Death has never passed out of date. But of all Deaths in the record of Man, none was more important than the Death of Christ. Everyone else who was ever born into the world, came into it to Live; Our Lord came into it to Die. Death was a Stumbling Block to the life of Socrates, but it was the Crown to the Life of Christ. He Himself told us that He came “to give His Life as a Redemption for many”; that no one could take away His Life; but He would lay It down of Himself. (He was both Priest and Victim)
If then Death was the Supreme Moment for which Christ lived, It was therefore the One Thing He wished to have remembered. He did not ask that men should write down His Words into a Scripture; He did not ask that His Kindness to the Poor should be recorded in History; but He did ask that Men remember His Death. And in order that Its Memory might not be any haphazard narrative on the part of Men, He Himself instituted the precise way It should be recalled.
Doug Lawrence's Catholic Site 
Just in case you might want to study the Bible, for Lent.
Try these links:
General information and on-line Catholic Bible
Classic traditional Catholic Bible commentary
Commentary/Bible/Catholic Catechism on The Passion
March 9, 2011
Categories: Books & Publications, Inspirational . Tags: Bible study, commentary, lent, The Passion . Author: Hosted by Doug Lawrence . Comments: Leave a comment