Shrove Tuesday —

” ‘This people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts’ ” Matt 15: 8-9

As I prepare for Lent, I think I need to bear this in mind. We Catholics have a lot of outward ways of expressing our faith and that is good as far as tradition goes. The problem sometimes is that the meaning gets lost in the doing. We begrudgingly give something up for lent, we grumble because mass is too long or worse, we judge other peoples actions. I think what Jesus was reminding the people of his time, in quoting the Prophet Isaiah, was that all of these “things” that we do need to be done in the right spirit otherwise they are empty. Lest I be a hypocrite, I need to adjust the way I am approaching Lent.

My priest said something interesting the other day, he said it doesn’t matter what you do…just do something! Good advice.

I want to sit in this quote for a while, try it on. It may be the only thing that fits me on this Fat Tuesday! Time to eat!