Pastor's Weekly Message

sixth sunday in ordinary time, 14-15 Feb 2026

My Beloved Fellow Saints-in-the-Making,

Greetings in Jesus Christ, Who chooses us to follow Him!

As we are on the threshold of Lent, let us strive in our endeavors to be more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ

To help us enter into this dynamic encounter with the One Who will give His Life for love of us and for our salvation, I’m offering one of Pieter Bruegel’s “busy paintings” from the mid-16^th Century to meditate upon this week to prepare for the forty days of Lent. The image will be easier to see on our weekly Flocknote as well as online by typing in your search engine “Pieter Bruegel Fight between Carnival and Lent.”

The painting features two central characters: Prince Carnival, who is carousing and regaling in bacchanalian fashion with his subjects behind him, grasping on to the last and final remnants of feasting; and Lady Lent, who leads with the dignity of discipline those who seek to grow more closely to Our Lord Who will suffer and die that we might have eternal life with Him. Find the two in the painting (they are “jousting”) and consider how you might enter Lent with less of an internal jousting against the Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. And see if you are able to spot in the painting where each Lenten discipline is being practiced, a subtle invitation to remember that these disciplines are not only for Lent.

Pieter Bruegel’s Fight between Carnival and Lent. 1559 Kunst Historical Museum, Vienna

Please know of my prayers for you and yours as we begin a season of sacred discipline that is also a season of sacred joy, because it leads us to seeking Jesus at all times.

God love you! I do.

Fr. Lewis