What holidays do Muslims celebrate? What did the Catholic Church create to stop Pagan festivals? What are the Jewish holidays? When is the Pagan new year? What is a pagan ritual? How many feasts of Israel are on the Jewish calendar?
Mardi Gras is just one local variant of Carnival — a tradition that dates back to medieval Europe. In the Catholic calendar, Carnival is the festival season that comes before Lent (the season of fasting that lasts for six weeks from Ash Wednesday until Easter). Knowing that no fun would b...
we also announce to you the joy of his Resurrection, who is our Savior. On the fifth day of March will fall Ash Wednesday, and the beginning of the fast of the most sacred Lenten season. On the twentieth day of April you will celebrate with joy Easter Day, the Paschal feast of ...
The Catholic Catechism, which is an official summary of Catholic beliefs, compares the 40 days of Lent to the 40 days in which Jesus was tested in the desert. The Catechism views Lent as an opportunity for believers to work on their spiritual lives. Lent is particularly appropriate for engagi...
In the Roman Catholic Church, Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting. In the sixth century, Christians who had committed grave faults were obliged to do public penance. On Ash Wednesday, they donned a hair shirt (which they wore for 40 days), and the local bishop blessed them and sprinkled ...
While Mardi Gras most certainly has pagan, pre-Christian origins, the Roman Catholic Church legitimized the festival as a brief celebration before the penitential season of Lent. The idea was to eat up all the rich foods in the house ahead of time, so as not to be tempted during the ...
To celebrate the incredible cinematic achievements of the decade,Stackercompiled data on all 1990s movies to come up with a Stacker score—a weighted index split evenly betweenIMDbandMetacriticscores. To qualify, the film had to have a premiere date between 1990 and 1999, have a Metascore, and...
Ashes, Too:Last year, on Ash Wednesday — the day Catholic priests daub the foreheads of their flock with ashes to mark the beginning of Lent — awareness of the coronavirus pandemic was just starting to spread. Today, some parishes are preparing congregants ...
“You’re addicted to suffering,” said my coach. “What’s that about?” “Well, I am Catholic; it makes sense,” I joked half-heartedly. And then I got frustrated. After all, I actually remember a time when this wasn’t the case. “I don’t get it,” I said, my frustration...
The verses from Psalm 66 are a lesson in prayer, a call to communicate with God in a different way than we are accustomed to do. Growing up as a cradle Catholic, I experienced prayer as a series of prescribed words and forms. My mother taught me the basic prayers of our faith – the...