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Fasting with Father
Fridays in Lent beginning the First Friday in Lent. We will have a Fish Fry Supper ($6 per plate). Directly Following the Stations of the Cross. Take out or Dine in and enjoy a brief Lenten message present by Fr. Melancon or Deacon Waguespack.
Let us gather around the supper table to listen, reflect and strengthen our relationship with God this Lenten season. For more information please call 337.896.9408 or office@sprcc.org
Fasting with Father
Fridays in Lent beginning the First Friday in Lent. We will have a Fish Fry Supper ($6 per plate). Directly Following the Stations of the Cross. Take out or Dine in and enjoy a brief Lenten message present by Fr. Melancon or Deacon Waguespack.
Let us gather around the supper table to listen, reflect and strengthen our relationship with God this Lenten season. For more information please call 337.896.9408 or office@sprcc.org
Fasting with Father
Fridays in Lent beginning the First Friday in Lent. We will have a Fish Fry Supper ($6 per plate). Directly Following the Stations of the Cross. Take out or Dine in and enjoy a brief Lenten message present by Fr. Melancon or Deacon Waguespack.
Let us gather around the supper table to listen, reflect and strengthen our relationship with God this Lenten season. For more information please call 337.896.9408 or office@sprcc.org
Fasting with Father
Fridays in Lent beginning the First Friday in Lent. We will have a Fish Fry Supper ($6 per plate). Directly Following the Stations of the Cross. Take out or Dine in and enjoy a brief Lenten message present by Fr. Melancon or Deacon Waguespack.
Let us gather around the supper table to listen, reflect and strengthen our relationship with God this Lenten season. For more information please call 337.896.9408 or office@sprcc.org
Ash Wednesday
Please see the Bulletin for Mass Times.
Feasting on Purple
As she serves her divine mission, the pilgrim Church remains a most real, sensate, even sensuous, creature. Few times of the year reveal this more clearly than the season of Lent.
For the next several weeks, the Church, despite her penance, will wrap herself and her prayer in the most ostentatiously imperial of colors - purple (or violet, for the more liturgically precise). Consequently, one should notice that as Christian stomachs fast during this holy season, Christian eyes, in church at least, will continue to feast.
To know the history of this color is to become aware of the near scandalous use the Church makes of it. On a deeper level, however, to appreciate the Church's adoption of this color for penance is to see more clearly the transformative power of her Master's grace. Conversion lies at the heart of Lent. Thus, we are reminded that, in the Redemption, everything can restored to the Lord and his purposes.
In ancient times, purple was the color of royalty and power. In Egypt, Rome, and Constantinople, the purple trappings of their offices singled out the emperors and nobles. Purple cloth, purple furnishings, and even purple ink served to distinguish visually the dignity and power they possessed. Worthy of note in this regard is a practice once found in the Byzantine world. Not to be outdone be their Western counterparts in imperial flair, the empresses of the East gave birth to their royal children in a purple chamber, in a room lined with porphyry, the purple stone of royalty. Thus, the infant princes earned the name porphyrogenitus - "born to the purple" - and the first thing that struck their infant eyes was the color of their future office. Even in ancient China the color purple gained royalty favor. The official name of the Forbidden City in Beijing is the "Purple Forbidden City."
Scripture also speaks of the royal and decadent use of the color purple. In the Old Testament, Daniel is promised jewels and purple garments if he would translate the mysterious writing that appeared on the palace walls (Dan 5:16). Dives, the wealthy sinner from St. Luke's Gospel (16:19), is described as draped in purple. So too is the cursed City of Babylon and its infamous whore in the Book of Revelation (17:4, 18:16). Not all instances of the color in Scripture, however, are associated with prideful human power. Elaborate instructions are given the book of Exodus for the use of purple cloth in the Temple. And all four Gospels detail how Christ's body, the New Temple, whipped and spat upon, was in kind adorned with purple.
It is this "Ecce homo" image of Christ, depicted in so many works of art, that inspires and shapes the Church's penitential use of this opulent color. The humiliated Messiah - beaten, bruised, and bleeding - is clothed by the soldiers in a purple robe as the King of the Jews. The world looks on this scene with horror. So too do Christians, but we also see in the mocked Christ the form of our discipleship and the salvific mystery that shapes our prayer. Christ is the King of Glory, so the soldiers were indeed right to drape his shoulders in purple. We too put on purple in Advent in expectation of the King's second coming.
Lenten purple, however, is different. During this season, the color draws us not to Christ's kingship only, but also to his Passion. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that the Messiah's dignity attained perfection especially through his suffering (2:10). Consequently, if Christ changes anything, if he infact makes all things new (Rev 221:5), it is not by royal edict. He signs nothing with pruple ink. Rather, as the suffering servant, he assumes the punishment for man's sins, suffers rejection and humiliation, mounts the wood of the cross, and, in obedience and love, sheds his blood for all. Thus, Lenten purple reminds us not only that Christ is king, but also how he is king, and by what means we are converted and are made new. Lenten purple calls us to conversion because it contains the crimson hues of Our Lord's blood.
The color purple, then, highlights the whole program of Christ's Lenten prayer. The purple shades of Lent focus our attention on Christ's kingship and, more importantly, on the sufferings that perfect his royal dignity and merit us grace, that gratuitous gift of God's own life that transforms our sinful hearts. It is a small sign of Christ's power that the feasting of our eyes on this luxurious color prompts our souls to prayer and contrition. In the Redemption, the color purple no longer lifts human heads in earhtly pride, but instead it lowers our heads, bends our knees, and brings our fists to our breasts as we plead for mercy. If, for our benefit, Christ effects this conversion in history's proud use of the color purple, imagine what greater wonders he wants to do this Lent to still prideful parts of our souls.
Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP
Dominican House of Studies
Office Closed
The Parish Office will be closed for Mardi Gras.
Office Closed
The Parish Office will be closed for Mardi Gras.
Baptism Class
If you are in need of Baptizing your child, please contact the Parish Office to sign up for the Baptism Class. Held in the Church Hall at 1:30 pm.
