Lent 2013
Fasting Guidelines — Parish Lenten Activities — Lenten Prayers — Lenten Recipes — Lent Q&A — Lenten Customs
Guide to Holy Week — Stations of the Cross — Prayer Book of Intentions — Bishop Taylor's Homilies
Holy Week Mass Times — Confession — Adoration — Daily Readings — Audio Reflections — Video Reflections
Catholic Teachings — Bible Studies — Lenten Reading — Volunteer Options
Our Father beckons: "Return to me with your whole heart." Each Lent the Church offers us a 40-day retreat designed to help us respond to this call. Lent is the primary penitential season of the liturgical year. We partake in Lent with prayer, fasting and almsgiving. To learn more, see Lent Q&A or 10 Things to Remember for Lent.
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and ends with the Easter Triduum — Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The Triduum is the liturgical celebration to help us embrace the ultimate act of love: Jesus' passion, death and resurrection, the foundation of the Christian faith.
This year, Ash Wednesday falls on Feb. 13. It is a day of fast and abstinence. Each Friday of Lent is a day of abstinence. On Good Friday, we abstain and fast. See Fasting and Abstinence Guidelines.
In this year's Lenten message, Pope Benedict XVI focuses on the relationship between faith and charity. "The celebration of Lent, in the context of the Year of Faith, offers us a valuable opportunity to meditate on the relationship between faith and charity: between believing in God — the God of Jesus Christ — and love, which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and which guides us on the path of devotion to God and others." Read the complete message