Lent has begun with record cold

 I cannot imagine the cold that some parts are feeling now, and some are without electricity and that may mean they have no heat, no way of cooking, etc. I feel for them as no one can go out to warm up in a restaurant. Here, at Oakwood, we are having meals brought to out rooms as we will be in quarantine until all have tested negative for two weeks. I really do not mind and find solitude helpful for prayer and for Lent. These are a precious forty days and we do not want to waste them.

I never used to like Lent. I could not wait until Easter came. That changed somewhere along the years. I remember one Lent spending my afternoon prayer with Jesus in the Agony of the Garden. I could not go on and really felt that this is when Jesus suffered the most. And now I seem to find the line from Mark 14 "they all left him and fled" staying with me. I read once that suffering alone is the greatest suffering and it must have been so heartbreaking for Jesus to have all his friends leave him.