Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving

The first pillar should be the easiest. We should pray each day anyway. Let's challenge ourselves this Lent to increase our prayer life. We do not have to set lofty goals - small, incremental steps may be more manageable.

• Begin with the basics: pray every day. A simple morning prayer like the Our Father and a Hail Mary may be a good place to start.

• Before we go to bed, a Glory Be, an act of contrition, or a prayer of thanksgiving for the day may be a good way to end our day.

• If you already pray every day, try adding a prayer or two.

• Add a prayer for priests and deacons, for Father Richard, for Archbishop Bolen, and for Pope Francis.

• Say a short prayer for your parents and/or your children.

• Begin with one decade of the rosary each day or every other day.

• Come to Adoration and Mass on the first Friday of each month.

• Come to Stations of the Cross on Wednesday evenings.

• Attend daily Mass. In St. Augustine's words, "The world could survive more easily without the sun than without the Mass."

• Read a chapter of the Bible.

There are countless ways to increase your prayer. Add one or more of the above; you don't have to do them all. The main goal is to increase your prayer life during Lent. Start small and increase slowly or more rapidly, whatever works for you.

The second pillar is fasting. Why do we fast? One reason is that we deny our appetites so that we can focus more on our prayer life. Another reason is that we can show solidarity with the poor. The poor do not have access to expensive groceries, many of which we now consider staples. When we skip a meal or abstain from eating meat, we experience what it is like to do without. We may perhaps even feel hunger like many of the poor experience daily.

There are other ways of fasting as well:

• Limit your time or abstain completely from social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.)

• Watch less television.

• Limit or abstain from video games.

• "Give up" something that you truly enjoy, like Starbucks or Tim Hortons coffee.

Lent is a time to fast from those things that have become an impediment in growing our relationshiop with our Lord.