"To worship Him with your wounds/For He's wounded too"

I could never really express what Michael Card's music has meant to me lo these many years. So, I won't try. Our Friday traditio for the second Friday of this Lent is his lovely song "Come Lift Up Your Sorrows."

Lent can never be the time when we decide anew to save ourselves, to correct all our faults by sheer acts of the will. It is the time for us to experience all over again the intensity of our deepest longing, for what we, in our heart of hearts, really and truly desire. Only because Jesus Christ was wounded for you and me can we lift up our sorrows to God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit as an acceptable sacrifice, thus knowing, again, what it means to be friends with Jesus the Lord, to be united with Him in suffering. During this season we can seek to make reparation for our wrongs, for those times we have rejected Jesus' friendship. How, you might ask? We make reparation through our prayer, fasting, and alms-giving.

In this most Holy Place
He's made a sacred space
For those who will enter in
And trust to cry out to Him;
You'll find no curtain there,
No reason left for fear;
There's perfect freedom here
To weep every unwept tear

Today is the fourth day of the Novena to St. Joseph. Being 3.14 (14 March), today is also international Pi[e] Day:

I will leave it up to you, dear reader, to resolve the dialectical tension between today being a Lenten Friday and International Pie Day, but only after noting that cherry pie, my favorite, contains no meat!