Welcome to all our catechumens and candidates, who will be entering the Church at the Easter Vigil. You are now on the last leg of your journey into the Catholic Church. And the entire Church is on this sacred journey with you in the holy season of Lent!

I am stepping in today for Bishop Raica, who sends you his regards and blessing. He had to be in Gaylord, Michigan for the ordination and installation of his successor as bishop. Pray for the new bishop there, Bishop Jeffrey Walsh.

We also join our brothers and sisters of all faiths throughout the world in praying for the people of Ukraine today and all through the Lenten season.

On Ash Wednesday some of us joined people of other faiths at Kelly Ingram Park for an inter-faith service for the people of Ukraine. It was coordinated by Father Justin Ward. A beautiful message from Bishop Raica was read by Father Kevin Bazzel. I read a prayer composed by Pope Francis.

It is sad that the Russian government thinks it can colonize an independent country. The days of colonization are dead. This terrible tragedy of war overshadows our experience of Lent this year, causing fear and sadness all through our world, but we continue to pray and hope!

The sacred season of Lent is upon us once again! It's a beautiful time, a beneficial time of our pruning from falsehood, worldliness, indifference: it's a time not to think that everything is well if I am well - to understand that what matters is not approval, the search for success, but the purity of the heart and of life.

Lent is a sacred time of quarantine for us followers of Jesus to enable us to take time out, both alone and with others, to discern where our hearts are directed, to rediscover the Lord and deepen our attachment to Him 100%, to get detached from the people, places, and things that distract us and detach us from life in the Spirit with the Lord.

When we received ashes on Ash Wednesday, we were reminded to repent or "turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel." It is a time to enter into the desert with Jesus and experience true conversion, really and truly turning away from sin to lead a life centered on the Lord.

It is interesting that the term we have been hearing so often during the COVID epidemic is quarantine. Quaranta is the Italian word for 40. A quarantine was originally the forty-day period during which an arriving vessel suspected of carrying contagious disease was detained in port in strict isolation. It is also the amount of weekdays from Ash Wednesday to Easter during which Christians celebrate the Lenten season. Lent is a spiritual quarantine for Catholics.

Pope St. Leo the Great once said that "with the return of that season marked out in a special way by the mystery of our redemption, and of the days that lead up to the paschal feast, we are summoned more urgently to prepare ourselves by purification of spirit. The special note of the paschal feast is this: the whole Church rejoices in the forgiveness of sins. It rejoices not only of those who are then reborn in holy baptism, but also of those who are already numbered among God's adopted children." And that's all of us, my friends - the pope, cardinals, bishops, clergy, consecrated religious, and laity - all the people of God - all of us are in this spiritual quarantine of Lent together!

St. John of the Cross once said that "at the evening of our life, we will be judged by love." Jesus put that message very dramatically in words found in Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 35:31-46, the final judgement scene, as He describes those who recognized Him in this life in those who were hungry and sick, ill or imprisoned, without clothing, or a stranger.

Jesus gives strong challenges to us about loving God and loving our neighbor, in particular about loving those who don't care much for ourselves. "Love your enemies and do good to them. For, He says, God Himself is "kind to the ungrateful and the wicked."

A daily or weekly examination of our lives could focus on those I find it difficult to live with or love. Or it may take the form of reviewing the seven capital sins to see if they are still at work in my life: pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, or lust.

The challenge of Lent is conforming our lives totally to the life of Christ. Pope Francis calls that "holiness of life" - attaching ourselves to Christ by a life of prayer and detaching ourselves from everything that separates us from Him.

I want to underline the importance of those words used often as we are marked with ashes at the beginning of Lent: "Repent (or) turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel." Most importantly Lent is that - detaching ourselves by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit from whatever leads us away from God and reattaching ourselves fully to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is a call to total conversion of mind and heart to God during the Lenten season. Do whatever you can, with God's grace, to accomplish this goal for Lent 2022! Uproot from your life anything and everything that leads you away from God!

May this holy season of Lent be a time of great blessing for those becoming Catholics at the Easter Vigil and for all those who bear the name Catholic already. May the Holy Spirit help us give our lives 100% to the Lord and His people in this special season of grace that is the 40-day period of Lent!