ASH WEDNESDAY

In humbled sorrow, bowed before God’s face, 
We beg His mercy lift our deep disgrace; 
We know the paths we stalked against His will,
But now we turn His pleasure to fulfill.
O Lord, in Thee all find sweet mercy’s place.
For Thou has made us all Thy Spirit’s vase;
Thou hatest none who strike fell Satan’s skill,
For all are made to live in heaven’s thrill. 

Though men do crimes. Thou winkest at the deed,
To draw them by Repentance to Thy heed. 
Forgiving those who in contrition pray.

With ash-strewn foreheads we confess our need, 
And Thou wilt pardon us without delay. 
Because Thou art Our Lord both night and day. 

Rev. T. F. Kramer, C. PP. S., in The Messenger of the Most Precious Blood. (The Catholic Standard and Times, Volume 30, Number 17, 28 February 1925)

“Ash Wednesday,” Julian Falat 1881. public domain.

"Sin is a thought, a word, an action, contrary to the law of God.

By sin, my children, we rebel against the good God, we despise His justice, we tread under foot His blessings. From being children of God, we become the executioner and assassin of our soul, the offspring of hell, the horror of heaven, the murderer of Jesus Christ, the capital enemy of the good God.

O my children! if we thought of this, if we reflected on the injury which sin offers to the good God, we should hold it in abhorrence, we should be unable to commit it; but we never think of it, we like to live at our ease, we slumber in sin. If the good God sends us remorse, we quickly stifle it, by thinking that we have done no harm to anybody, that God is good, and that He did not place us on the earth to make us suffer.

Indeed, my children the good God did not place us on the earth to suffer and endure, but to work out our salvation. See; He wills that we should work today and tomorrow; and after, an eternity of joy, of happiness, awaits us in heaven.

O my children! how ungrateful we are! The good God calls us to Himself; He wishes to make us happy for ever, and we are deaf to His word, we will not share His happiness; He enjoins us to love Him, and we give our heart to the devil.

The good God commands all nature as its Master; He makes the winds and the storms obey Him; the angels tremble at His adorable will; man alone dares to resist Him.

See; God forbids us that action that criminal pleasure, that revenge, that injustice; no matter, we are bent upon satisfying ourselves; we had rather renounce the happiness of heaven, than deprive ourselves of a moment's pleasure, or give up a sinful habit, or change our life. What are we, then that we dare thus to resist God? Dust and ashes, which he could annihilate with a single look.

By sin, my children, we despise the good God. We renew His Death and Passion; we do as much evil as all the Jews together did, in fastening Him to the Cross. Therefore, my children, if we were to ask those who work without necessity on Sunday: "What are you doing there?" and they were to answer truly, they would say, "We are crucifying the good God." Ask the idle, the gluttonous, the immodest, what they do every day. If they answer you according to what they are really doing, they will say, "We are crucifying the good God." O my children! it is very ungrateful to offend a God who has never done us any harm; but is it not the height of ingratitude to offend a God who has done us nothing but good?

It is He who created us, who watches over us, He holds us in His hands, like a handful of hair; if He chose, He could cast us into the nothingness out of which he took us. He has given us His Son, to redeem us from the slavery of the devil; He himself gave Him up to death, that He might restore us to life; He has adopted us as His children, and ceases not to lavish His graces upon us. Notwithstanding all this, what do we make of our mind, of our memory, of our health, of those limbs which He gave us to serve Him with? We employ them in committing crimes.
The good God, my children, has given us eyes to enlighten us, to see heaven, and we use them to look at criminal and dangerous objects; He has given us a tongue to praise Him, and to express our thoughts, and we make it an instrument of iniquity, we swear, we blaspheme, we speak ill of our neighbor, we slander him, we abuse the supernatural graces, we stifle the salutary remorse, by which God would convert us; we reject the inspiration of our good guardian angel.

We despise good thoughts, we neglect prayer and the Sacraments. What account do we make even of the Word of God? Do we not listen to it with disgust? How miserable we are! How much we are to be pitied! We employ in losing our souls the time that the good God has given us to save them in. We make war upon Him with the means He has given us to serve Him; we turn His own gifts against Him! Let us cast our eyes, my children upon Jesus fastened to the Cross, and let us say to ourselves, 'This is what it has cost my Savior to repair the injury my sins have done to God."

A God coming down to the earth to be the victim of our sins! A God suffering, a God dying, a God enduring every torment, because He has put on the semblance of sin and has chosen to bear the weight of our iniquities.

Ah! my children, that sight of that Cross! Let us conceive once for all the malice of sin, and the abhorrence in which we should hold it. Let us enter into ourselves, and see what we ought to do to repair our past sins; let us implore the clemency of the good God and let us all together say to Him, from the bottom of our heart, " O Lord, who art here crucified for us, have mercy upon us! Thou comest down from heaven to cure souls of sin; cure us, we beseech Thee; cause our souls to be purified by approaching the tribunal of penance; yes, O God! make us look upon sin as the greatest of all evils, and by our zeal in avoiding it, and in repairing those we have had the misfortune to commit, let us one day attain to the happiness of the saints."

Source: The Spirit of the Cure d'Ars by l'Abbe Monnin 1865

Prayer for Lent: O Lord who, for our sake, didst fast forty days and forty nights; give us grace to use such abstinence that, our flesh being subdued to the spirit, we may worthily lament and acknowledge our wretchedness, and may obtain perfect remission and forgiveness of Thee, the God of all mercy, who livest and reignest with the Father and Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen

Source: Lent with the Cure d'Ars Compiled by the CAPG

Temptation of Jesus in desert. By William Hole 1908

"Almighty God! I unite myself at the beginning of this holy season of penance with the Church militant, endeavoring to make these days of real sorrow for my sins and crucifixion of the sensual man. O Lord Jesus! in union with Thy fasting and passion, I offer Thee my fasting in obedience to the Church, for Thy honor, and in thanksgiving for the many favors I have received, in satisfaction for my sins and the sins of others, and that I may receive the grace to avoid such and such a sin, N. N. and to practice such and such a virtue, N. N."

Rev. Fr. Leonard Goffine's The Church's Year

O Face Divine!

O Face most sorrowful yet so benign!

So beauteous still in grief, towards me incline!

O Sacred Eyes!

On which the weight of dreaded anguish lies,

That look must break the heart which Christ denies.

O Lips so meek!

Unless their all absolving word I seek,

Those lips one day eternal doom will speak.

O Sacred Face!

Which mortal hand has dared with prayer to trace,

Thee on my heart with throbs of awe I place.

O Face Divine!

Give me of love returned some blissful sign;

O Face Divine, in grief towards me incline.

Source: Sister Saint-Pierre and the Work of Reparation, Rev. P. Janvier

The Feast of the Holy Face – Shrove Tuesday On April 17th, 1958, His Holiness Pope Pius XII approved the observance of a Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus on Shrove Tuesday (Tuesday before Ash Wednesday).

A Prayer for the Church

O God, by Thy Holy Name have pity on us, protect us, and save us.
O good Jesus, in the sweet Name guard our Sovereign Pontiff; breathe into his
soul the spirit of the Comforter.

Jesus, thy Church is menaced with great trials! Holy Father, by the virtue of
thy salutary Name protect the Church of Jesus Christ. This was the last will of
thy Divine Son; it is the holy prayer which love prompted towards the end of his
life. Holy Father, keep in thy Name those thou hast given me (St. John chap. xxxvii. 11)

O most holy and worthy Mother, refuge of the Church, intercede for us and save us by
the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

St. Michael and the Holy Angels, guard the bark of Peter; disperse its enemies
by the Holy Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Source: Sister Saint-Pierre and the Work of Reparation.

Manual of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face

I salute, adore, and love Thee, O Jesus, my Savior, covered anew with outrages by blasphemers, and I offer Thee, through the heart of Thy blessed Mother, the worship of all the Angels and Saints, as an incense and a perfume of sweet odor, most humbly beseeching Thee, by the virtue of Thy Sacred Face, to repair and renew in me and in all men Thy image disfigured by sin. Amen

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• Oratoire de la Sainte Face Tours France
• Video of the Diocese of Tours (In France)
  

• Lenten Resolution Worksheet
  

"The practice of Lent is not today what it was in the past. The black fast common in the day of our fathers and grandfathers, would seem to our day and generation a burden too heavy to be borne: the rules of the fast have been lightened and dispensations are multiplied to fit the burden to the back of a people less physically strong than their forbears, living in a time of hurry and strain. In this the Church has acted as a tender Mother, solicitous for the bodies as well as the souls of her children.

But the Church is not alone a tender Mother: she is first and always a faithful Spouse. The law of Christ is her law, the words of Christ are her words; she would not subtract from them one iota, nor will she ever admit that her children cannot follow where He has led. Others may say that His words must not be taken literally; that His law cannot be rigorously applied in the struggle of our complex life; that no man can aspire to the Christ life. Not so, the Spouse of Christ, the Catholic Church. She knows and she believes that Christ is the Son of God, the Divine Word: that He is Eternal Truth Who can neither deceive nor be deceived: that He is Infinite Wisdom Whose commands are possible and Whose counsels are delightful. Has He not said: “Follow Me,” and “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”?

Now the command to do penance was uttered by her Lord and Master in no uncertain terms: “Unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish” (Luke xiii. 3-5). And again, after His resurrection, He built up the faltering faith of His disciples by asserting the necessity of His Passion and of the continuance of the work of penance: “It behooved Christ to suffer and to rise again from the dead the third day: that penance and remission of sins should be preached in His Name” (Luke xxiv. 46, 47). How, then, may we reconcile the mitigation of the fast and multiplied dispensations with the Church’s fidelity to the exact teaching of the Master? To find the answer we must penetrate more deeply the mind of our Mother; we must analyze more carefully the meaning of penance and study its purposes more attentively.

If we look into the mind of our Mother, we will find her always tender, often indulgent, but never weak: her aim is not to spoil, but to strengthen: to build up, not to tear down. What she concedes to the weakness of the body is not to enervate the soul but to provide it with a more virile temple, a more active co-partner in the following of Christ. If the external circumstances of penance are changed, it is only to stress more deeply the hidden significance of the inevitable divine law: “Unless you do penance, you shall all likewise perish.” Every year the Holy Spirit within her invites her children, most urgently, to turn aside from the busy marts of men and follow our Lord into the desert. Those whose strength permits them the privilege of sharing literally His fast, she warns that “the letter without the spirit is dead”; those whose weakness does not permit them that privilege, she reminds that they are not thereby excused. For them, too, is the ringing call of the Master: “Deny thyself, take up thy cross and follow Me,” and it may not be evaded: all may not fast with Christ but all must pray with Him in the desert, if they would not perish.

Now, then, as never before, perhaps, it becomes us to take stock of what Lent is to mean to us in practice, to enter more fully into the self-denials of prayer and acquire more truly the spirit of penance.

Only thus will we be really in touch with the mind of our Mother, faithful to the leading of the Holy Spirit of Love, and obedient to the behest of our Divine Savior and Model: “Be ye perfect.” For, as St. Paul reminds us, only “if we be dead with Him,” shall we “also live with Him” (2 Tim.
ii. 11).

Source: Lent In Practice, (The Spirit of Penance) by Father John Burke C.S.P.

"The persecutions which the evil enemy has stirred up at various times against the most holy sacrifice of the Mass are a proof how sacred a thing it must be, and how obnoxious to the devil; otherwise he would not attack it with such violence. (...)

From the days of the apostles until the present time the holy sacrifice of the Mass has had no more vehement opponent than the unhappy Martin Luther, who not only attacked but decried this divine mystery. He did not do this of himself, nor when he first apostatized, but at a later period, and at the instigation of the devil. In fact the deluded man himself acknowledges in his writings that his teaching comes from the devil, and only at the suggestion of the evil one has he abolished the Mass as an act of idolatry, although he must have known full well that the devil is the hater of all that is good, and teaches mankind naught but what is evil."

(...)

If the people are ignorant of the great value of holy Mass they do not love and esteem it as they ought; they never go to Mass on week-days, and on Sundays and holidays they are too often indifferent, irreverent, superficial; they absent themselves on a mere pretext, and without the slightest scruple of conscience.

But if they understand the vast efficacy and value of the holy Mass, they cannot fail to prize more highly this costly treasure, to love it deeply, and assist at the divine oblation with greater reverence. There is in the Catholic Church no mystery more important, more consoling, more salutary, than this sublime mystery of the altar. If this truth were recognized aright, we should certainly see a larger attendance at Mass on week-days."

Source:Cochem's Explanation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

St. Zachary

"St. Zachary succeeded Gregory III., in 741, and was a man of singular meekness and goodness. He loved the clergy and people of Rome to that degree that he hazarded his life for them on occasion of the troubles which Italy fell into by the rebellion of the Dukes of Spoleto and Benevento agaisnt King Luitprand. Out of respect to his sanctity and dignity, that king restored to the Church of Rome all the places which belonged to it, and sent back the captives without ransom. The Lombards were moved to tears at the devotion with which they heard him perform the divine service. The zeal and prudence of this holy Pope appeared in many wholesome regulations which he had made to reform or settle the discipline and peace of several churches. Saint Boniface, the Apostles of Germany, wrote to him against a certain priest named Virgilius, that he labored to sow the seeds of discord between him and Odilo, Duke of Bavaria, and taught, besides, many errors. Zachary ordered that Virgilius should be sent to Rome, that his doctrine might be examined. It seems that he cleared himself; for we find this same Virgilius soon after made Bishop of Salzburg. Certain Venetian merchants having bought at Rome many slaves to sell to the Moors in Africa, Saint Zachary forbade such an iniquitous traffic, and, paying the merchants their price, gave the slaves their liberty. He adorned Rome with sacred buildings, and with great foundations in favor of the poor and pilgrims, and gave every year a considerable sum to furnish oil for the lamps in Saint Peter's Church. He died in 752, in the month of March.

Reflection: Oh, That we realized the omnipotence of prayer! Every soul was created to glorify God eternally; and it is the power of every one to add by the salvation of his neighbor to the glory of God. Let us make good use of this talent of prayer, lest our brother's blood be required of us at the last."

Source: Lives of the Saints, with reflections for every day in the year.

To God the Father.
Be mindful, O Eternal Father, of Thy Church, which Thou hast possessed from the beginning; recognize in her the unspotted bride, for whom Thy Adorable Son shed His Precious Blood. Vouchsafe to exalt her, to sanctify and replenish her with such an abundance of Thy graces, that she may be worthy of her Divine Spouse, and that her children may confess Thee with a lively faith, call upon Thee with a firm hope, and love Thee with a perfect charity. Amen.
Our Father, Hail Mary.

To God the Son
O Lord Jesus, the True Light, that enlightenest every man coming into the world, dissipate, I beseech Thee, the darkness of heresy and schism. Open the eyes of those in error, that they may perceive the brightness of Divine Faith, and embrace the doctrines of the true and only Church, so that, for the future, there may be but one fold and one flock. Amen.
Our Father, Hail Mary.

To God the Holy Ghost.
O Holy Ghost, Spirit of Peace and Love, enkindle in the hearts of princes, the fire of divine charity, which Thou camest to cast upon the earth! Teach them not to meditate any enterprise subversive of Thy Glory of They Church's peace, but to seek by every means in their power to attain for themselves and those confided to them the enjoyment of eternal repose. Amen
Our Father, Hail Mary.

To the Most Holy Trinity
Adorable Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Who didst create the souls of infidels after Thine own image and likeness, hear the prayers of pious Christians, and the supplications of Thy Church; disperse the blindness of idolaters; send among them men truly apostolic, who may teach them the only saving faith; and grant them the grace to know and adore Thee for evermore. Amen.
Our Father, Hail Mary.

Prayer for our Holy Father the Pope
O God, the Pastor and Governor of all the faithful, look propitiously on Thy servant N., whom Thou hast constituted Head of Thy Church; grant him grace to form to virtue and religion, both by word and example, the flock committed to his charge, so that they may, with him, attain the rewards of eternal life. Amen.
Our Father, Hail Mary.

May the Almighty and Merciful God graciously hear us.
And may the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Source: The Holy Family Manual, A Selection of Prayers and Devotional Exercises, Sisters of Notre Dame, Cincinnati, Ohio 1883