Booklets are at the shipment center. Orders will be sent out soon.
Peace compels us: Reflections for Lent 2026 -- This year’s Lent booklet features reflections for every day of Lent from Ash Wednesday (February 18) through Easter Sunday (April 5) written by Michael Angel Martín and Bishop John Stowe -- Michael has written the reflections for Monday-Saturday, and Bishop John has written the Sunday reflections.
Michael Angel Martín is the state coordinator of Pax Christi Florida and a member of the Pax Christi Young Adult Caucus. His poetry and essays have appeared in America magazine, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, and other literary and spiritual publications. A Benedictine oblate, he lives in Miami, Florida.
Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv., is the third bishop of Lexington. He was appointed by Pope Francis in 2015 and was ordained to the episcopacy on May 5 of that year. He previously served as the Rector of the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio and was the Vicar Provincial for the Franciscan province of the same name. From the time of his ordination to the priesthood in 1995, Bishop John served in the Diocese of El Paso on the US-Mexico border until 2010. There he served as a pastor as well as the Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia of the diocese from 2002 until 2010. He has BAs in Philosophy and History from St Louis University and an M.Div. and STL from the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley (now part of Santa Clara University).
NOTE: The price of the booklet is $5.00 (with further discounts of 10 percent on orders of 10-99 or 30 percent for 100+). Place your order now for yourself, your parish, religious community, ministry, school, and family to assure reception in time for the start of Lent, Ash Wednesday, February 18.
Excellent for individual reflection and prayer or in small groups, this booklet is available for order now in the hard-copy print version. An electronic version will be available by early February.
EXCERPT:
From Ash Wednesday, Michael writes:
... [D]espite the best efforts of ministers to smudge a tight cross over our brows, not a single one turns out like another, even before the remaining days’ sweat finger-paints on us.
But that’s just it, isn't it? The particularities of our dust — our unhealthy habits, our infirmities, our failures, the ways we’re trapped in sinful systems, our very deaths — are unique to each one of us. Ironically (again), this reminds me that I, like you, am a thought God has had from all eternity, a God who not only loves humanity in its entirety, but loves each of us entirely, as if each were God’s only child. That means we might recognize one another by our blotches; that while their forms may differ, we’re all marked, whether worn for all to see on our foreheads or not. In that recognition, we find that we’re all in this life together. So we pray for each other, because that’s how we seal bonds of solidarity. So we give alms because what we possess, frankly, belongs to the person who needs it most. And so, we fast, because we must feel at least a fraction of the world’s hunger, one pang at a time. ...
