This coming week we will celebrate Ash Wednesday and begin the Lenten season — the most significant and exciting time for the Church. Many of you may be surprised to see “exciting” linked to Lent. Too often people mistake this time for renewal leading up to the ultimate celebration that marks us as Christians — Christ’s resurrection — as a time of somberness and sacrifice.
        It’s understandable that many might view the Lenten season with a bit of trepidation. Too often we become focused solely on the rituals we’re most familiar with from giving up our favorite things to adhering to fasting and abstinence rules. And at Ash Wednesday, the “kick-off” to the season, we hear the following phrase as ashes are signed on our foreheads:

        “Remember You are Dust and to Dust you Shall Return.”

At first reflection this seems a grim and almost morose reminder of our own mortality. The saying itself originated in the Church in the Middle Ages when death was prevalent due to wide-spread disease and plagues. The exciting part of that mortality for us as Christians is our belief that our lives do not end here on earth but continue in a new way with our heavenly father.
        Lent truly can be an exciting time if our faith remains in focus. Perhaps nothing reflects this focus and renewal more than is witnessed in those individuals actively seeking a new life in Christ in the Catholic Church through RCIA — Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. These seekers are on a conversion journey and along the journey they are aiding in the renewal of the parish community as they are embraced by their sponsors, the catechists, their families and us as their fellow community of believers. We are joined in our Lenten mission: they to embrace the sacraments of initiation and us to renew our sacramental promises, especially those made in our own baptism.

         As is stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

     “The fruit of Baptism, or baptismal grace, is a rich reality that includes forgiveness of original sin and all personal sins, birth into the new life by which man becomes an adoptive son of the Father, a member of Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit. By this very fact the person baptized is incorporated into the Church, the Body of Christ and made a sharer in the priesthood of Christ.”
        As Pope John Paul II has said: “To believe in Christ means to desire unity; to desire unity means to desire the Church; to desire the Church means to desire the communion of grace which corresponds to the Father’s plan from all eternity. Such is the meaning of Christ’s prayer.” (Ut unum sint” (That They May be One, Ut Unum Sint [hereafter UUS], no. 9).
        At the first Sunday of Lent next week (February 10th) and again the following Sunday (February 17) our Diocesan RCIA candidates and their sponsors will participate in the Rite of the Election at the Cathedral. It is during this special Liturgy of the Word that they are officially cemented as members of the elect. They are called to give a public response to God’s call.
        I ask that you keep all the candidates in your prayers during this Lenten season and that as you embark on your own Lenten journey you join with your community in setting Christian examples to all who may be listening for the call.