A Pentecost Sunday Thought About Continuing Our Penitential Practices Even During This Easter Season
It's Pentecost, one of our greatest feasts. Let's spend a little time in recollection that our penitential practices ddn't end with Lent. They should have continued - though perhaps a lesser degree of intensity - throughout all of this past Easter Season. The same carries over now into the rest of this Liturgical Year. There are many applications of our penances. A natural tendency would be offering them up in reparation for our sins. Of course, one must have a deep-seated sense of being a sinner in the first place. And that's something many of us have lost in our post-Vatican II world. You would imagine our shepherds (bishops and priests) would be assiduously working to correct this loss. But that's sadly not the case. Sin has disappeared from sermons, for the most part. But let's not digress. Back to penitential practices. Another admirable application of our penitential acts of mortification and sacrifice might be to offer these up for the Holy Souls in Purg