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(CNS illustration; photo by Brad Birkholz) By Anna Jones • Catholic News Service • Posted March 12, 2021 Most Catholics are intimately aware of the three pillars of Lenten practice prayer, fasting and almsgiving. And in these unprecedented times that have become the new normal, that call to prayer, fasting and, yes, even almsgiving, remains. Almsgiving is a “a witness to fraternal charity” and “a work of justice pleasing to God,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2462). Put simply, it is donating money or goods and doing works of charity. Unfortunately, due to the financial challenges so many have faced throughout the pandemic, almsgiving may seem out of reach. ....
Effie Caldarola By Effie Caldarola • Catholic News Service • Posted December 11, 2020 The 19th-century English poet Christina Rossetti had never heard of COVID-19, climate change or many of the woes that beset us in the bleak midwinter of 2020. Yet, in her poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” she paints a Christmas scene that endures and brings an odd, consoling joy into these troubled times. She sets the stage for Jesus’s appearance into our chaotic world with these sobering lines, “In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,/ Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.” Not everyone celebrates Christmas in the middle of a hard winter, but for those in the Northern Hemisphere, there are Advent days when ice forms on window panes and chilly winds whip through sullen grey skies. ....