(If you don’t have time to read this now, please take note of the buttons on the right. They are free for the taking, for you to use on your Web site. Click on a button to pick up the html code.)

Wow! Doesn’t it seem as if Christmas is barely over, yet Ash Wednesday and Lent are upon us? That’s because Easter, based on the cycles of the moon since ancient times, falls on a different date each year. This year is the earliest possible Easter; hence the early beginning of Lent. It happens every so often, but well-prepared parish Web sites can handle it!

Ash Wednesday is February 6 this year, just two weeks away. Perhaps we’ll see among our parishioners and beyond a heightened awareness of Christian practice, and certainly a lot of questions about the Catholic faith (like, “Why is Lent so early?”).

That questioning becomes an opening to talk about what Lent should mean and be for all of us. As you no doubt know, Lent is a six-week period for all of us to reflect more deeply upon the saving presence of Jesus in our lives and to weed out everything that stands between us and Jesus. It is the time of preparation for newcomers to enter the Church and has roots in the training of catechumens for initiation. You can read some nice, easy-to-understand Catholic teaching about that in our newly updated Lent feature. I would encourage you to study some of the articles and to place our free graphic links to the feature on your own site. We’ll keep the feature updated with solid Catholic catechesis from our ministry set at the heart of the Church with all of those articles as well as a calendar of suggested Lenten practices to help your visitors stay focused.

This year, we are offering again our Franciscan Radio program, Lenten Radio Retreat, a project of the U.S. bishops’ Catholic Communication Campaign. Each half-hour webcast (available free for local radio broadcast) features one of 12 bishops (six English-speaking, six Spanish-speaking) reflecting on the Sunday gospels. Our American Catholic Radio also has a fresh show each week during Lent with solid inspiration and information. For example, our Ash Wednesday show includes an interview from St. Peter’s in the Loop Parish in Chicago, which has a huge distribution of ashes. All of it (except the ashes!) can be downloaded for mp3 players. Links for both Lenten Radio Retreat and American Catholic Radio are available to enrich your site during the entire season of Lent.

By the midde of next week (a week before Ash Wednesday) we'll be offering a video introduction to Lent by our own Franciscan Father Greg Friedman. (You can see our Advent/Christmas clips there at this writing.) These new Lenten clips will be added to our growing ministry at YouTube. We’ll be linking directly over to it—you can, too.

I encourage you to use our graphic buttons, which we’re certain will make your site more lively and inspiring with solid, trustworthy Lenten features—just in time for Ash Wednesday!

Nominated for our “Site of the Year” award last year, BedeVa.org was a strong contender thanks to clear navigation, timely content and beautiful photos. Click on “About Us” to find a monthly message from the pastor, Mass schedule, directions, bulletin and newsletter. Be sure to launch the “Virtual Tour,” a collection of gorgeous photos featuring the church’s exterior, artwork, Mass and pipe organ. Take some time to browse the site’s content to learn about various ministries and religious-education programs. There’s a lot to read, but it’s easy to digest thanks to appropriate spacing and font sizes, good use of subheads and well-placed art.

 

Lovers of fiction, don’t pass up this site! CatholicFiction.net provides reviews of your favorite classic Catholic novels and short stories—and new books, too. Using the site’s index, you can browse blog posts about works by Graham Greene, François Mauriac, Evelyn Waugh and other popular Catholic writers. Or, choose your favorite genre and dig into great articles on works of comedy, mystery, science fiction, etc. In addition, CatholicFiction.net occasionally reviews non-Catholic novels (like the last in the Harry Potter series), discussing them from a Catholic point of view. Want to recommend a book for review? Want to contribute to the site? See the “About Us” page for details. Happy reading!

 

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