The community Mass will be celebrated at 11:00 AM: Abbot Robert Barnes will preside and preach. The Fourth Sunday of Lent is traditionally known as “Laetare Sunday” from the Introit: “Rejoice, Jerusalem”. We have arrived at a point in Lent when we shift the focus from repentence and conversion from sin to the joy of redemption.
Perhaps it’s worth recalling that in most European languages, “Lent” is called “The Forty Days”. Our English word “Lent” is derived from the old Anglo-Saxon word for early Spring. Spring was the time when our ancestors ate the last supplies from the previous harvest, when they tightened their belts, turned the earth and sowed the precious seed saved from the previous year for the new growth. We can look at the traditional Lenten fast and self-mortifications not as gloom and punishment but as our ploughing and tilling and planting, our work and sweat, to prepare for the bounty to come. As St. Benedict wrote in Chapter 49 of his Rule, we look forward to the holy joy of Easter.
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