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Lenten Christ's Crown
submitted by Christine Boyle
 On Ash Wednesday, my family and I place toothpicks* (the
number of toothpicks is determined by the number of children in our family
multiplied by 40) in a grapevine wreath, purchased from Joann Fabrics, in
order to make Christ’s Crown of Thorns.
The Crown of Thorns is placed in the center of our dining room table.
During dinner, the children tell us of a good deed or of something
they have offered up for Christ and then they pull a thorn (toothpick) out
of the crown and place it in a glass dish that is located on the table.
On Easter morning, the children find the crown decorated with beads
or Easter eggs (We have done both over the past seven years.) and the glass
bowl full of Easter eggs. Our
children really enjoy seeing how they can transform Christ’s Crown of
Thorns into a true crown.
* The toothpicks can be painted brown.
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Food
for Thought
submitted by Peggy Gagliardi
“In those days, since I still had the
world’s ideas about food and nourishment and health, I thought the fast
we have in Trappist monasteries in Lent was severe.
We eat nothing until noon, when we get the regular two bowls, one
of soup and the other of vegetables, and as much bread as we like, but
then in the evening there is a light collation—a piece of bread and a
dish of something like applesauce—two ounces of it.
However, if I had entered a Cistercian monastery in the twelfth
century—or even some Trappist monasteries of the nineteenth, for that
matter—I would have had to tighten my belt and go hungry until four
o’clock in the afternoon: and there was nothing besides that one meal:
no collation, no frustulum. Humiliated
by this discovery, I find that the Lenten fast we now have does not bother
me.”
(Taken from Thomas Merton, The Seven
Storey
Mountain
, An
Autobiography of Faith)
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