Cohoes parish links Lenten customs to Jubilee Year

Through prayer, almsgiving and service, parishioners are keeping alive some of the Lenten traditions of those individual parishes (St. Agnes/St. Patrick's and St. Marie's) while creating new ones that represent the unity among Holy Trinity parishioners, according to Rev. Arthur Becker, pastor.

"We're tapping into the traditions of what the parishes did, and we've begun to develop new traditions for celebrating Lent, the Triduum and Easter," he said. "There are still recognizable pieces there, but they know it's something new."

Inspired

"It sounds like he sat in our prayer and worship committee meetings," Father Becker said. "We've had Lent planned before Christmas, and everything he talked about, we were doing."

Using this theme as their Lenten theme, parishioners are making prayer, almsgiving and service their priorities leading up to Easter:

* Among the ways in which prayer receives special attention are: daily liturgy; morning prayer and liturgy each Tuesday and Thursday; noon liturgy on Friday; and Stations of the Cross and liturgy at 7 p.m. each Friday.

"What we've tried to do this year is focus in homilies and liturgies on what Lent means in a practical kind of sense," Father Becker said.

He used the recent Gospel story about Jesus cleansing the temple to teach parishioners about opening wide the doors to let Christ into their lives and to clean house by letting go of grudges, gossip and judgment.

"People who sit in church, for the most part, don't break the 'big' commandments," he said. "You need to look at the little stuff, because it causes problems for most of us."

* Through almsgiving, parishioners donate to a different local charity each week, including Community Maternity Services, the Salvation Army, the Eddy Daybreak Program, Joseph House, and Habitat for Humanity.

* The first opportunity for parishioners to give service this Lent came April 1 as they cleaned the church and parish grounds. A food drive with the Girl Scouts and delivery of flowers to homebound parishioners on Palm Sunday are other ways in which Holy Trinity is serving others.

"It makes no sense to do any of this unless it moves people to reach out beyond themselves to do service in the parish or community," Father Becker said.

Youth involvement

A chain of prayer and good deeds keeps growing as children live out their faith; junior and senior high students will read the Passion and lead a procession to the church for blessing of the Palms on Palm Sunday.

"We're asking them during this Lenten season to think about how they can open their hearts and what they can do," Mrs. Raup said. "The kids and the teachers have gotten into doing things not only for themselves but also for the rest of the parish to see."

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