2019 Lenten Events
Register below for our upcoming Lenten events, or scroll down for more information about each of the events. We hope you will join us!
For information about our upcoming Lenten events, please continue scrolling or click the links to register.
Register for Homily Helpers
Register for Unraveling the Three Days
Liturgy of the Hours: Office of Readings
Wednesdays, March 13, 20, 27 and April 3, 10
6:30-7:00pm in the Church
Refreshments available at 6:00pm in Founders Room
The Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office, is a beautiful and ancient tradition in the Church that is not reserved for priests and religious, but can also be prayed by the lay faithful. The Second Vatican Council highly encouraged the laity to "recite the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 100). One of the special forms of prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours that is particularly Lenten is the Office of Readings. Like Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer it is part of the cycle of prayer the Church asks all the faithful to observe during the day. But unlike Morning or Evening Prayer, the Office of Readings can be prayed at any time during the day, and it focuses upon scriptural and non-scriptural readings. The Office has a similar origin with the Liturgy of the Word proclaimed at the Easter Vigil in the ancient Church. During the Season of Lent, the whole of salvation history is proclaimed in the Office of Readings along with commentary on this history from some of the ancient writers of the early Church. Please join us on Wednesday evenings at to enjoy some refreshments and pray this ancient and beautiful liturgy whose prayer will lead us into the Triduum and the celebration of the Easter Vigil. Contact: Tim.Hetzel@stfrancisraleigh.org
Lenten Tenebrae Service
6:30pm in the church
Come and pray with us at the Lenten Tenebrae Service as we prepare to celebrate the holiest days of the Church year, the Triduum; three days marking Jesus' passion and resurrection. Tenebrae, meaning "darkness" or "shadows" in Latin is a traditional prayer of the Church that reflects the darkness of Good Friday with the gradual extinguishing of light. Contact: Tim.Hetzel@stfrancisraleigh.org
Homily Helpers with Fr. Steve Kluge
Mondays, March 4, 11, 18, 25 & April 1, 8, 15
9:45-10:30am in Padua
Cost: FREE, but please Register
For many of us Lent is a time of "giving things up" a time of fasting and abstinence, a 40 day desert experience. Yet the desert is also the place one can rest in the oasis. This Lent find some refreshment in the oasis of the Sunday scriptures. Join Fr. Steve Kluge as we open the Sunday readings and offer our insights and help in the creation of the homily.
Click Here to Register for Homily Helpers
Lent: A Season of Transformation
Tuesdays, March 19, 26 and April 9
7:00-8:30pm in the Founders Room
Cost: $12, includes study materials and refreshments
During Lent, we strive to free ourselves from all kinds of clutter-material and spiritual-in order to focus on God and turn back to him with our whole hearts. If this "turning back" is genuine, it will be a reorientation, a transformation. To help us enter into this season, Fr. Steve Patti and Jenn Fiduccia will guide participants in exploring three key moments in the life and ministry of Jesus. The result will be a better understanding of the authentic transformation that God calls each of us to embrace as individuals and as a community and a renewed desire to live God's own outward-looking, self-emptying, laying-down-one's-life kind of love.
Unraveling the Three Days: The Paschal Triduum Explained
Thursdays, March 21, 28 and April 4
Join Fr. Jim Sabak to explore the power of depth and meaning contained in the liturgical celebrations of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil/Easter Sunday. These days, the highest and most important of all days in the Church's calendar, are the core and central reason for why the faith we are gifted with exists. If we are to understand and live this faith authentically, then we must continually deepen our understanding and grasp of what it means for Jesus to be crucified and raised up. Many times we simply attend one or the other of these days and nothing more because we believe we are fulfilling an obligation of sorts. By journeying through the liturgies of each of these days and their theological contexts we will see that these are days of awe and wonder, not merely obligations to fulfill. With a fuller appreciation for the power and dynamism contained in each of these days, we may enter into them ready to be touched and affected, impacted and transformed by the wonder of God to which they draw us. A more fruitful Easter Season and Christian life can then follow.