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The question “How is your Lent going?” is not one I would be apt to ask another person directly, but it is one I regularly ask myself.

I usually begin by looking at my life in terms of the pillars of Lent: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. I appreciate the opportunity Lent provides to remove distractions and “extras” from my life and get back to basics in my diet, in my relationship with God, and in my outward actions toward others.

After the Christmas season, my physical health benefits from removing chocolate and snacks from my days and increasing fish, legumes, and vegetables in my diet. Lent is not intended to be a weight-loss program, but fasting can help us develop reverence for our bodies by focusing more earnestly on healthy choices. Fasting also makes us appreciate the gift of food; as we hunger for physical satisfaction, we are reminded that our souls hunger and thirst for God in a way only he can fill.

Prayer leads us toward filling that hunger and thirst, for communicating with God is essential to our spiritual health. In Lent, we are reminded to increase our prayer habits in ways such as attending Mass more than once per week, visiting the Adoration chapel, praying the Rosary or the Stations of the Cross, or getting out of bed a few minutes earlier than usual to read Scripture, a prayerful reflection, or listen to a religious podcast. 

Lent is not a time to decide to make every possible change or to do everything at once, lest we fall flat on our faces before the first week is over. We must pace ourselves by creating attainable goals so that, ideally, once Lent is over, some of our practices remain as permanent habits. It is through these habits that we come to know God in a more intimate — ultimately life-saving — way.

Almsgiving may seem more difficult in our economy, especially since Lent falls during tax season; however, giving to others does not always need to be financial. For many, the money saved by not having extra foods during Lent can be set aside for charity. For others, donating food, clothing, or recyclable containers allows us to think outside ourselves. Even random acts of kindness or extra prayers for others — particularly those who challenge us, or even strangers — allow us to spread God’s love in the world. Knowing God through prayer and sacrificing from our own physical needs through fasting both lead us outward, in keeping with the pillar of almsgiving.

Are these Lenten pillars always easy? No. In fact, Chris Stefanick states, “Lent reminds us that love costs something.

Young Catholics discerning a career in medicine face not only long years of training, but also the challenge of navigating a health-care culture that often demands ideological conformity. On March 7, a panel of Catholic physicians hopes to help students face that reality with clarity, confidence, and faith.

A panel of Catholic medical professionals will meet at Holy Name Church in Vancouver to help young people considering medical careers better understand the beauty of medicine and answer their questions about navigating the necessary training and education.

The event is being moderated and organized by Vancouver family physician Dr. Christopher Ryan, who, with his wife, bioethicist Dr. Yuriko Ryan, is a parishioner at Corpus Christi in Vancouver.

He told The B.C. Catholic the event was inspired by post-Mass conversations with young people curious about working in medicine.

The enthusiasm of local health-care professionals to join the panel has impressed Ryan. He quickly had seven panellists and hopes to have more by the time of the event, representing nursing, pharmacy, and a range of medical specialties. 

“I don’t think that in my lifetime my faith or beliefs were threatened as they are now,” he said. “I think that this is a time to stand up.”

What gives him hope is seeing young people “who are taking their lives and their vocations seriously, standing up for what’s right, and being brave.”

The goal of the event is to help even more young people do just that. While the landscape of health-care training has become more ideological, Ryan believes there are more opportunities than ever for those considering medicine, and they’re all open to practising Catholics. He hopes the panel will help students navigate an increasingly progressive interview process.

He says the public imagination has stagnated on the value of doctors’ personal values, especially if they are religious, and many question the need for Catholic health care or Catholics in medicine. He considers such thinking shortsighted, noting the value of a physician who shares their patient’s perspective on religion and spirituality.

He values having a Christian doctor with whom he has “shared goals, beliefs, respect and understanding.” A Catholic doctor offers the “extra benefits of faith and belief in God and his grace,” bringing consolation that another doctor might struggle to provide.

“We know that God loves us and that there is a life thereafter,” Ryan said. “Having that confidence and maturity is a really great thing to share with [your patient].”

Ryan recalled a conversation with his wife, the other Dr.

Friends, physics has certain laws, meaning that we can discern probabilities and expectations from nature—and the same obtains in the spiritual order.

In this talk delivered to attendees of the 2024 Good News Conference, I share four scriptural stories that exemplify one such spiritual principle: Mercy comes first; love follows. 

As I neared college graduation earlier this year, I found myself in a state of constant restlessness and uncertainty. I had no idea what the next chapter in my life held. This, combined with the devastation of multiple recent family tragedies, was a heavy cross for me to bear.

On Good Friday, when I felt the weight of all these crosses the most, I rediscovered a prayer that my friend had given me. The prayer is titled “Just for Today”:

Just for today I will not worry. I will not be angry. I will be kind to every living thing. I will do my work honestly. I will be compassionate and forgiving. I will find joy even in the smallest of life’s gifts. Just for today, I will feel at peace.

This simple prayer made me realize that the best thing I can do about the uncertain future is to live in the present as best I can. I can choose to either live today in worry or in a way that I would be satisfied with should it be my last. The prayer inspired me to practice the virtues it presents in a concrete way and to live each day well, despite the things that I can’t control.

Trust 

Recently, I started a job as a journalist for a pro-life media outlet. Researching and writing about people defending abortion constantly tests my trust in the hope of the Resurrection. To combat this, I offer two prayers which provide the comfort of God’s love and help me to strengthen my faith in him.

The Litany of Trust is one that I recommend saying at the beginning of the day, as part of your morning offering. It is a great way to tell God right from the start that you are placing your trust in him, no matter what the day brings. I am also a fan of the Surrender Novena. This is one that I like to pray at night, when I struggle to let go of all my worries and rest. In it, Jesus speaks to each of us with a love so deep that it is hard not to find comfort in his words. 

Trust is hard. But I have found that when I don’t actively pursue it, I am always in a state of greater worry and frustration.

Forgiveness

When my brother decided last summer that he could no longer be around my family, I thought I would never be able to let it go. It was too personal, too tragic and painful a loss to simply leave it in the past. But then I realized that forgiveness isn’t a one-time thing.

Shelly remembers the first time she encountered Sancta Maria House. A small prayer card had blown through the air and landed on her boot. On one side was a picture of a happy-looking woman with the words “thank you God for hearing my prayer and answering it.” On the other side was a phone number.

Shelly, a survivor of domestic abuse, had spent years of her life with a man who didn’t love her, and even when she finally left him at 32, drug abuse was waiting in her next relationship.

“I didn’t know there was an ending to it,” she said. “I didn’t know there was a solution, and I certainly didn’t know there was a God.”

She felt “instant change” when she walked through the door of Sancta Maria House. “I felt something that I hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever. I felt a belonging. I felt hope.”

Shelly is now a house parent at Sancta Maria House and she wants others to know there is help. “[My] humble prayer was ‘God help me to figure out why I’m doing this. Help me to stop. And help me to be able to help others.’”

Sancta Maria House is one of several beneficiaries of the Living Waters Fund, a grant program supported by the 2025 Archbishop’s Dinner to help ministries and organizations that help women find safety and healing from domestic abuse and drug use.

The fund supports safe refuge and long-term support for women fleeing abuse, outreach to women on the streets and those affected by sexual exploitation, assistance for single mothers building stable lives, and healing for women facing trauma and injustice. New applications will be accepted from March 1 to 31. 

Sancta Maria House

Since opening its doors on Valentine’s Day 1960, Sancta Maria House has been a quiet and persistent force for good in the Kitsilano neighbourhood, helping women battling substance abuse find their footing and reclaim their lives.

Through its structured, abstinence-based program, women find a nurturing, family-like setting. In addition to the costs of running the centre, donations help pay for activities and services offered to residents, including arts and crafts and faith studies.

Donations also help buffer women from financial strain while seeking stability, allowing them to stay while their applications for government aid are being processed.

Sancta Maria House has part of the life of St. Augustine’s Parish in Kitsilano, women encouraged to take part in parish life and rediscover a sense of belonging. Over its history, Sancta Maria House has helped more than 300 women, ensuring each resident hears a message of love and finds a path toward renewal.

In recent weeks, we invited readers and health-care professionals to share stories about why Catholic health care matters. The response was thoughtful and deeply personal. The following reflection from a longtime nurse practitioner at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver offers a firsthand account of how faith shapes care in daily practice.

I have been a nurse practitioner at St. Paul’s Hospital since 2006. Over the years, I have had many opportunities to leave for other health authorities, yet I have made a deliberate choice to remain at Providence Health Care. What has kept me here is not convenience or habit, but a deep personal conviction and sense of vocation rooted in our mission: “Inspired by the healing ministry of Jesus Christ, Providence Health Care is a Catholic health care community dedicated to meeting the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs of those served through compassionate care, teaching, and research.”

That mission is not abstract. I have seen it lived out in quiet, ordinary, deeply human moments—moments that felt unmistakably different because they occurred within a Catholic health care setting.

Meeting patients where they are

While working in the heart failure clinic, I cared for a man who was recently widowed, living alone, and approaching the end of life with advanced heart failure. Simply getting to the hospital for outpatient appointments was overwhelming for him. Even walking from the HandyDART drop-off to the fifth-floor clinic caused significant physical distress.

At that time, our clinic was not structured to offer home visits. Yet when I requested them, the clerical team moved quickly and creatively to make it possible. I visited him at home several times.

Yes, his symptoms were better managed. His physical suffering was eased. But what remains with me most vividly are the conversations—about his wife, whom he dearly loved and had recently lost, and about his passion for cooking for her. He was profoundly lonely, and that loneliness caused a suffering no medication could address. Those visits offered companionship, dignity, and presence. They alleviated his isolation and accompanied him through to his natural death.

Being seen and heard

Another patient in the heart failure clinic, also nearing the end of life, attended visits with his wife. His cardiac symptoms were reasonably controlled, but his most distressing complaint was something seemingly small: a severely painful ingrown toenail.

Once again, our clerical team helped arrange a home visit, which was not a standard option. I could not treat the toenail myself, but I took his concern seriously and referred him directly to a compassionate podiatrist in the community who also practised at St. Paul’s Hospital. He died a few months later.

Eight years after his death, his wife went out of her way to find me working in the atrial fibrillation clinic.

2nd Sunday of Lent, Year A
First Reading: Gen 12:1-4
Second Reading: 2 Tim 1:8b-10
Gospel Reading: Mt 17:1-9
By Rev. V.J. Hawkswell

This Sunday’s First Reading describes how God called Abram. By this call, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, God began gathering his people into his one Church.

The Gospel Reading describes how Jesus chose Peter, James, and John and “was transfigured before them.” This event, just six days after Peter had recognized Jesus as the Son of God and Jesus had chosen Peter as the rock on which he would build his Church, “confirms Peter’s confession,” says the Catechism.

Thus Abram and Peter were called and chosen for pivotal roles in God’s saving plan. Are we envious, or are we thankful that we ourselves are not chosen and called in this way? Is it a blessing or a curse to be chosen?

The truth is that God has chosen us; he does choose us and calls us “with a holy calling,” as St. Paul says in the Second Reading. The Catechism confirms that we are all, no matter our state of life, “called to holiness,” to “the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity.” As Jesus said, “You must be made perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Holiness means “ever more intimate union with Christ,” the Catechism explains. We enter it through the sacraments. In Christ’s Mystical Body, we enter into the intimate union of the Holy Trinity, and in the Holy Trinity we find the happiness for which God made us.

However, the Catechism stresses, “the way of perfection passes by way of the cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle.”

Renunciation is precisely the business of Lent. Through self-denial, we cultivate detachment from this world in order to become more firmly attached to heaven.

“Many people today—even some Christians—misunderstand Christian self-denial,” says Scott Hahn in his book Lord, Have Mercy. “They try to dismiss it as psychologically sick, world-hating, dour, joyless, and masochistic.”

There are two misunderstandings here, he says.

First, Jesus himself said, “If a man wishes to come after Me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross, and begin to follow in My footsteps.” Self-denial “is not optional”; there is no “alternative, self-indulgent way of salvation.”

Second, self-denial is not “a denial of the goodness of the world. Christians sacrifice the best of things not because they think the world is evil and must be put to death, but because they know the world is very good—so good that it can distract us from what’s far better.” We are tempted to enjoy its good and pleasant pastimes rather than going to confession or Mass or visiting our grandmother in the nursing home.

Archbishop Richard Smith drew on Indigenous imagery to speak about faith and reconciliation at St. Paul’s Squamish Nation Church in North Vancouver, telling parishioners that Christ is the weaver who binds humanity together.

“When we share faith in Him, we are brought together as his people and we are created by the Lord into something of astonishing beauty,” he said in his homily during the pastoral visit. 

Archbishop Smith met with Squamish Nation elders, a meeting he personally requested. “We talked and shared stories for almost two hours,” he said. “The non-Indigenous—our country broadly—has so much to learn from Indigenous ways, from the traditions, from the culture, from the learnings.”

Reflecting on the ceremonial paddle he was given by the Squamish First Nation when he arrived in Vancouver last year, he recalled elders telling him the paddle was a lifeline, necessary for traversing the water in a canoe. Christ is the same, he said, “Jesus is our eternal lifeline. He, and he alone, is the one sent by the father to lead us to heaven.” 

Many people in the world today “need to be thrown that lifeline,” he said. “There is great suffering in our world today. There is a great sense of loneliness” amid the world’s “fracturing” and “division,” from warring nations to families.

During his visit, Archbishop Smith was shown Indigenous baskets made of cedar root and cherry bark, an image he used to reflect on Christ’s role in uniting humanity. Christians, he said, are like a basket woven together by Jesus himself. “Who does the weaving? [It’s Jesus,] because he is the lifeline,” he said, “the one who does the intricate interweaving that brings humanity together.”

As he finished his homily, he reaffirmed the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s commitment to truth and reconciliation. “I want you to know—I want the people to know—that I am committed, and the Archdiocese is committed to that ever-closer interweaving among ourselves,” he said. 

“My hope and my prayer is that as we grow in reconciliation—the Church and Indigenous peoples together—as we look at that basket as see it as symbolic of the interwovenness that we want to exist between ourselves.”

He ended with a call to work together, asking the Lord “to interweave us so that we will become a beacon for others that says unity and reconciliation is possible.” 

Hope is real and tangible, he said, “and we can touch it the more deeply that we are reconciled with one another.