The Holy Season
of Lent 2021
"Take up your cross," the Savior said,
"if you would my disciple be;
take up your cross with willing heart,
and humbly follow after me."
Lent is a special time of year when the Church invites us to enter more deeply into the Church’s traditional penitential discipline to imitate Jesus's forty days of fasting and praying in the wilderness before His public ministry.
Jesus said, “If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” The cross in Jesus’ time is an instrument of humiliating torture and death. With Jesus' victory over death, the cross has become the universal symbol of Christ’s love and redemption, of new life in Him. Jesus takes up His Cross for our salvation. He invites us to take up our cross to follow Him. Commitment to Jesus means taking up our daily cross, be it trial of life, disappointments, despair, loss, or adversity. No matter how trying our crosses are, Jesus walks with us. He will transform them into blessings and miracles that transcend our hope and understanding.
Dear Friends, Jesus invites us to imitate him by carrying our daily cross. By sharing in His suffering, we will share in the glory of his resurrection. May Mary, Our Mother, accompany us during this holy season of Lent and help us to carry our cross in the footsteps of Jesus in order to arrive at the joy of Easter.
We wish you a very grace-filled and holy Lent.
Mother Mary Joseph and all the Sisters of Terre Haute Carmel.
“Lent begins with the ashes, but eventually leads us to the fire of Easter night; to the discovery that, in the tomb, the body of Jesus does not turn to ashes, but rises gloriously.”
Pope Francis