Mardi Gras is less than two weeks away. It’s a great time for family and friends to enjoy time together. Even if parades and costumes isn’t your thing it still provides us with an opportunity to pause from our usual routine.
      More importantly, this means that Ash Wednesday and Lent is coming. A great way of having a good Lent, as with success with anything else, is preparation. In the old Liturgical calendar, before the changes brought by the Second Vatican Council, the Sundays immediately before Lent made us aware of this, as purple was worn. So there is even recent precedent here in preparing for Lent before it comes, as it can catch us by surprise.
  What does it mean to have a good Lent? I don’t think it necessarily means when take on really serious mortifications, or do a lot of them. A good Lent is when we are really better spiritually at the end of Lent then when we started. Lent is simply a means to an end, and that end is growth in holiness and virtue. This is what it means to have a good Lent.
  In the coming days we would all do well to engage in some honest self-reflection. What are the sins we are struggling with right now? What is my primary fault? Or in other words, which of the 7 Capital Sins is my root sin, and tend to confess those types of sins the most? Where we are the weakest is where we should focus our Lenten practices. Taking the time now, preparing now, will allow us to hit the ground running on Ash Wednesday. We will have a great Lent, and an even better Easter.
  So I wish everyone a great Mardi Gras, parades or not. Enjoy the time in being able to pause for a moment. And get after it on Ash Wednesday .