Lenten Season  -  2010
Lenten thoughts.....

Is your vision of Lent those 40 days of "giving up something" - sacrifice, meatless Fridays, fasting, extra prayers, Stations of the Cross, etc.?  Is there a new awareness that something has changed in your Parish…the prayers, the starkness, the song, the silence, the color?  Where is the Gloria, the Alleluia, the flowers?  Awe yes…this is all Lent, but much more.

By definition, Lent is a penitential season of six Sundays and forty weekdays that prepares for  the high feast of Easter, beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending with the evening  Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday.  It is also a time for a step by step preparation period for Catechumens (those being initiated into the church) for the Paschal Mystery.   

Lent is a preparation for an event. Lent is a waiting period.  Lent is a journey towards that which is good and leaving behind that which would harm us spiritually.  Lent places emphasis on recalling our Baptism – that conversion.   Lent, my friend, is a time to come back to God.  


Our GREAT ADVENTURE
begins during the Season of Lent - 2010

On Wednesday, 17 February 2010,  we began the Holy Season of Lent:
A time of internal renovation. We look into our lives to see
what needs to be refurbished or thrown out. Instead of giving
something up this lent...throw something out; some vice, weakness,
failing or sin. OR put something worthwhile in, like:

    Click on any UNDERLINED LINK for additional information
  • Thursdays in Lent - 7 PM Mass followed by Stations  at St. George
  • Fridays in Lent - 7 PM Stations
  • Parish Lenten Penance Service – Friday, March 26


The Lenten Celebration of the Eucharist is by far the best way to put something into your life – Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist!  Consult the bulletin for times, places and days.
Ash Wednesday – February 17
9:00am – Sacred Heart Church
7:00pm – St. George Church – Father Laicha
7:00pm – Sacred Heart church – Father Bill

Did you know...

The Wednesday after Quinquagesima Sunday, which is the first day of the Lenten fast.

The name dies cinerum (day of ashes) which it bears in the Roman Missal is found in the earliest existing copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary and probably dates from at least the eighth century. On this day all the faithful according to ancient custom are exhorted to approach the altar before the beginning of Mass, and there the priest, dipping his thumb into ashes previously blessed, marks the forehead — or in case of clerics upon the place of the tonsure — of each the sign of the cross, saying the words: "Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." The ashes used in this ceremony are made by burning the remains of the palms blessed on the Palm Sunday of the previous year. In the blessing of the ashes four prayers are used, all of them ancient. The ashes are sprinkled with holy water and fumigated with incense. The celebrant himself, be he bishop or cardinal, receives, either standing or seated, the ashes from some other priest, usually the highest in dignity of those present. In earlier ages a penitential procession often followed the rite of the distribution of the ashes, but this is not now prescribed.

There can be no doubt that the custom of distributing the ashes to all the faithful arose from a devotional imitation of the practice observed in the case of public penitents. But this devotional usage, the reception of a sacramental which is full of the symbolism of penance (cf. the cor contritum quasi cinis of the "Dies Irae") is of earlier date than was formerly supposed. It is mentioned as of general observance for both clerics and faithful in the Synod of Beneventum, 1091 (Mansi, XX, 739), but nearly a hundred years earlier than this the Anglo-Saxon homilist Ælfric assumes that it applies to all classes of men. "We read", he says,

in the books both in the Old Law and in the New that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.

And then he enforces this recommendation by the terrible example of a man who refused to go to church for the ashes on Ash Wednesday and who a few days after was accidentally killed in a boar hunt (Ælfric, Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 262-266). It is possible that the notion of penance which was suggested by the rite of Ash Wednesday was was reinforced by the figurative exclusion from the sacred mysteries symbolized by the hanging of the Lenten veil before the sanctuary. But on this and the practice of beginning the fast on Ash Wednesday see LENT.




Stations of the Cross – Thursdays and Fridays

Thursdays in Lent
  • 7:00 PM Mass followed by Stations – Saint George Church

Fridays in Lent
  • 7:00 PM  – Sacred Heart Church
  • 7:00 PM on 5 March -Children’s Stations of the Cross - Sacred Heart

There is no Thursday Evening Mass at Sacred Heart Church during Lent

Did you know....

Stations of the Cross (or Way of the Cross; in Latin, Via Crucis; also called the Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrows, or simply, The Way) refers to the depiction of the final hours (or Passion) of Jesus, and the devotion commemorating the Passion. The tradition as chapel devotion began with St. Francis of Assisi and extended throughout the Roman Catholic Church in the medieval period. It is less often observed in the Anglican and Lutheran churches. It may be done at any time, but is most commonly done during the Season of Lent, especially on Good Friday and on Friday evenings during Lent.


The Way of the Cross
Origins of the Stations of the Cross

Parish Lenten Penance Service
Friday, March 26 at 7:00 PM Sacred Heart Church

This is a Penance Service for the families of St. George and Sacred Heart Churches

Besides our own Penance Service,  there will be Penance Services during that entire week at Deanery Churches. 

Check BULLETIN for updates.

Annual Lenten Appeal – Saturday, 27 Feb. and Sunday, 28 Feb.

The Season of Lent gives us an opportunity to help those outside our parish
and area through the many ministries of our Diocese.

There are a number of outreach ministries in our area financially supported by the Diocesan Lenten Appeal.


Catholic Charities Counseling Services, located on the
Campus of the Sisters of Saint Cyril and Methodius motherhouse.
Our contributions help to offer counseling on a sliding scale basis
or free of charge for those who are poor

Bucknell University, Bloomsburg University and Susquehanna University Catholic Campus Ministry, providing a priest presence and many opportunities for spiritual growth
through programs and services:
It is the Church away from home for our college Students

Geisinger Medical Center,
providing a full time Catholic Priest Chaplain
for the many Catholic Patients who are treated at the Center.

We help with the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy
by supporting these ministries financially.

Our tithe (10%) can be divided as follows:
5% to the Parish
1% to the Lenten appeal
4% to other charities



The parish keeps all of the money that is collected over and above our assessment.
This helps significantly to balance our budget and provide for our parish needs.

The Lenten Appeal will be an in-pew Solicitation at all the weekend Liturgies
27 -28  February 2010