Saint Anastasia

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent:

Father, look on us, your children. Through the discipline of Lent help us to grow in our desire for you. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

Do you like to be called a child?


Today's pray calls us children. It asks the Father to look on us. He does look on us in love. He wants us to be happy. He sees into our heart, and knows it better than we do. He sees what keeps us from being happy. These are our sins -- the chains I wrote about yesterday. God has sent us this Lent to examine these, and to break free from them -- with His help.



It is through Lent -- and the disciplines of Lent -- fasting, prayer, almsgiving -- that God wants to draw us to greater freedom.



He wants to arouse us to desire to see Him more. In the prayer language of the Church prayer, to see and to know mean the same thing. So as we pray today asking God to help us grow in our desire to see Him, we are asking for our desire to know Him to grow.



Here in this Church there is a rare opportunity to see and to know the Lord. This is the only parish in Rome with perpetual adoration of the Eucharist. To see the wholeness of the Lord --body and blood, soul and divinity -- and so to come to know Him and to come to know that He knows us -- for He has come to become a man. He knows our weakness, since He has flesh, and so He can call us to greater things.



North American Church Guide

Saint John Cantius Parish Guide