Our Lenten Plans

I love the flow of the liturgical year in the Catholic Church and might even say that I LOVE Lent.  I really enjoy having a time of the year where we are asked to reflect, reboot and restart.  Really, when you think about it we are calling to meet Jesus at the Cross and try to be a little bit more like Him.  He suffered for us, he loves us, he loves others.  This is the time for us to do a little bit of suffering to build a more perfect relationship with Him, create the best version of ourselves and love those around us!

This is where the acts of Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving comes into play during Lent.  We are asked to spend time in prayer to deepen our relationship with God and love Him more.  We are asked to fast, and meet Jesus at the Cross with our own little sufferings.  We are called to Give Alms and look outside of ourselves to give to others. 

After some prayer and discernment we have decided what our lesson plans are for this year!

1.  Prayer:

Individual: 

I love Eucharistic Adoration but I have never made an hour of Adoration a regular part of my life.  We very commonly go to the Adoration Chapel at our Church, but I am usually with all of the children and we spend 10-15 minutes there together in prayer.  While I adore that our children ASK to go to Adoration and I love having this experience with them I know that God is asking me for more. 

I plan on starting to have one hour of Eucharistic Adoration a week during Lent.  Because of my husband's variable schedule as a ER Physician (his shifts constantly change days and hours of the day) it is difficult to find a regular time each week where I can sneak away from our children.  Thankfully, we have worked together to find time for all of the weeks of Lent to start this goal of mine.

Couple:

I have gotten pretty good at praying FOR my husband, but I am not always very successful at praying WITH my husband.  Again, I use that variable work schedule of his as an excuse of why it is "too hard" to find the time each day, but how silly does that sound!  It is "too hard" to find 10 minutes to pray with my spouse?  No more, even if it is 2 minutes a day, our goal is to pray WITH each other.

Family:

Last year we started praying the Stations of the Cross as a family during Lent.  It was a beautiful experience and we all learned a lot and gained many graces!  We would pray in Our Little Oratory, at our Parish or other places around the community.  We plan on continuing this practice this year on Fridays.

In addition we are going to pray the Rosary together daily.  We get in good patterns where we pray the Rosary together and then life "gets in the way" and we stop.  Or, commonly we will pray a decade a day and call it good!  This Lent we are going to try to pray the full Rosary together daily.  We can use the Holy Hero CD's or just pray it on our own!

 

See what we did for Prayer Last Year HERE!

2.  Fasting:

Deciding on something to "give up" for Lent and to fast from beyond Meat on Fridays, etc is always the most difficult part of Lent for me.  I loved listening to the Carrots for Michaelmas Podcast with Meg Hunter-Kilmer about Getting Inspired for Lent.  She spoke about how Jesus fell three times, and it is ok for us to fall as well, as long as we get back up!  She also spoke of asking your community to help decide what to give up for Lent, so that is what I did!  I did the scary thing of asking my husband and children what to give up and got the response I needed.  It was hard to hear, but made it obvious what God and my family were asking me to do.

I am giving up my phone!  Now, obviously I am going to continue to use my phone to communicate with people when needed, but other than using it to answer or make a phone call or the occasional needed text message I am going to keep my phone in it's charger in our kitchen.  No more browsing Facebook, or Amazon, reading blog posts, listening to Podcasts, etc.  When I am with my husband, children, family and friends I want to be truly present with them.  I am going to let myself check my e-mail/Facebook once or twice a day on my computer, but simply going to be significantly more mindful of my time and get off my phone!

 

See what we did for Fasting Last Year HERE!

3. Almsgiving:

This year we are making an Almsgiving Box for our home where we will place an item of food, money or a household item (clothing ,toys, etc) each day.  Then at the end of Lent we will donate everything in our box to those in need!

We just took an old diaper box, decorated it in pretty wrapping paper and used quotes about giving alms from Catholic Icing!

See what we did for Almsgiving Last Year HERE!