By Steve Sticker

Columnist

 

This is the middle of Holy Week – the most important week in Catholicism as it spans the final eight days of Jesus’s life – Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday.

On Ash Wednesday, March 5, Lent began – 43 very long days ago as of today, counting Ash Wednesday and Sundays – and I’m counting them because that would be dismissing eight very long days of my Lenten voluntary abstinence of a great many food items that I cherish, to include beer, wine, and my beloved bourbon covering 47 days in total on Easter Sunday, to meditate on the life of our Lord and our flaws to correct them – well, me anyway.

Lent officially ends for we Catholics tomorrow evening at 7:00 pm when the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday begins. For many years we held an Easter family reunion for our family, my mother, three sons, and the families of my three sisters in New Madrid, MO, beginning with a Friday Fish Fry and Keg where we all gathered and on Saturday, a very formal playing of Whiffle Ball all day – so fun!

Now, I debated as to how and when to write about this. Due to the magic of print media, I am actually writing and submitting this column to my Eagle editor and publisher, Thursday, April 10.  So…counting today, I still have eight days remaining on my Lenten journey until Lent ends for me on that Holy Thursday the 17th….

Eight long days still knee deep in the Lenten desert sands, the Oasis of Holy Thursday within sight. – I can feel the cool breeze, smell the sweet water, flowers, and palm trees.  By the time y’all read this, I’ll have one day to go before enjoying the food I love. especially a wee tipple of my wonderful bourbon  – all stuff I’ve readily given up for so many years I can’t remember when it began, all to meditate on our Lord giving up his life to save us.

This has been one of the toughest Lents that I can remember.  With a new pacemaker implanted on Thursday, January 23, heling, surgery repeated on Tuesday, February 18 to connect that wayward third lead, overnight in the hospital, more healing and just stuff that the evil one threw at me saying just a sip of my swell bourbon would help ease all that….

At times as I struggled over these 43 days, waist deep in sand, wanting to quit, so difficult to continue, but I thought about our Lord not quitting, my very strong willpower, never once quitting over all those years, and if I did, forever I’d have to live with that and the devil laughing.  So when weak prayed to Jesus for strength and received it.

And I think over these 43 days since Ash Wednesday how my prayer life has deepened; the revelations God has allowed me on the passion and death of his son; the holy family, life in general, and amongst the turmoil, an unfathomable peace.

And contemplated how fast time passes and in an eye blink it will be next Ash Wednesday – and like those times all night on the bunker line every five days in Vietnam after another long frightening night praying for the dawn, and it always, thankfully, came. Thus the saying, the longest hour is just before dawn….

On a lighter note, the 89th Masters, at the Augusta National Golf Course, kicks off today, April 10th, is over on Palm Sunday, and reading this on the 16th, along with our Ole Miss Baseball series with Tennessee, will know who won, and allows me to relive the awesome experience of being there on Tuesday, April 9, 2013, for a practice round with my son and best friend, Stephen for an unforgettable life-time memory…talking about time passing quickly….

If you don’t have a Lent in your life and the prayerful opportunity to stop or slow down to meditate and evaluate where you are, have been, and are going, heightened by giving up things in your life that you cherish, creating a unique stress unto itself, I truly encourage you to enrich your life by doing so. Peace Out

Thank you my Lord Jesus Christ and Happy Easter, y’all.