Embrace Your Renewal: A Thought A Day for Lent

The readings for the weekday masses for the first three weeks of Lent take their Gospel reading from Saints Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with emphasis on the cures and works of Jesus. From the fourth week on, Gospel passages are from St. John, centering on the person of the Lord and fitting for those about to commit themselves to him. For the Christian, Lent means an opportunity to banish ignorance, to deaden lust, to enrich the poor, to defend children, to make decent medical care as globally ubiquitous as Coca-Cola, and to end many world catastrophes. Mortification guides our imagination and memory by keeping away useless or harmful thoughts, and it may also help control the tongue from useless and frivolous conversations or gossip. All of these topics and many, many more are presented in an informative and entertaining fashion in these thoughtful reflections for the weekdays of Lent. They are ideal for homilists as well as for the average person in the pew.

About the Author: Father Harold A. Buetow, PhD, JD, is the author of Pastoral Talks for Special Occasions (Alba House, 1994), along with two very highly-acclaimed trilogies of homily reflections: one on the Readings of the Sundays and Holy Days of the Liturgical Year (Alba House, 1997) – God Still Speaks: Listen! (Cycle A), All Things Made New (Cycle B), andOde to Joy (Cycle C); and another on the Weekdays in Ordinary Time (Alba House, 2002) – Thirst for Life (Weeks 1-9), The New Out of the Old (Weeks 10-21) and Rejoicing in Hope (Weeks 22-34). A priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, he spent thirty years at Catholic University where he taught and was Senior Staff Editor on The New Catholic Encyclopedia.

Book: 207 pages
ISBN: 978-0-8189-0959-7
Prod. Code: 0959-5

"Embrace Your Renewal: A Thought a Day for Lent by Father Harold A. Buetow looks at the Scriptures for each day of Lent and includes topics such as making the right choices, God's criteria for judging us, hope, personal responsibility for reconciliation, and handling betrayal. A twenty-five page foreword gives a scholarly background of the history and practices of Lent and is written in a simple style that does not put off nonscholarly readers. The reflections themselves combine scripture passages and storytelling in a style well suited for meditation." --Review for Religious, 03.2.2004