Friday after Ash Wednesday – C
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, as we gather on this first Friday of the Month, and the first Friday after Ash Wednesday, we are led into the heart of our Lenten journey—a time of reflection, repentance, and renewal. Today, in most of our Catholic churches around the world, we celebrate the Way of the Cross, also known as the Stations of the Cross, a devotion popularized by the Franciscan friar, St. Leonard of Port Maurice in the 18th century. This sacred practice invites us to ponder the final hours of Jesus’s earthly life, to walk with Him two-thousand years ago through the streets of Jerusalem and up Mount Calvary to Golgotha, and to unite to His suffering so as to better understand and appreciate the depth of His love for us.