The penitential hymn is based on a 10th century Mozarabic Litany for the Lenten Season. 
Latin:
Attende Domine, et miserere, quia peccavimus, tibi.
Ad te Rex summe, omnium redemptor, oculos nostros sublevamus flentes: exaudi, Christe, supplicantum preces.
Dextera Patris, lapis angularies, via salutis, ianua caelestis, ablue nostri maculas delicti.
Rogamus, Deus, tuam maiestatem: auribus sacris gemitus exaudi: crimina nostra placidus [...]

Says More Than a Bodily Fast Is Needed This Lent
Fasting from words and images this Lent will help to prepare the soul to listen to the Word of God — the Word with a capital “W,” commented a Vatican spokesman.Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said this during the most recent [...]

  Today, the first Sunday of Lent, the Holy Father addressed the pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square to pray the Angelus, reminding them that the beginning of this liturgical period means “dedicating particular attention to the spiritual struggle to oppose the evil that exists in the world, in each one of us, and around [...]

Lent

February 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment

The English word “Lent” is from  the Anglo-Saxon word meaning “spring.” However, the official term used by the Church is “Quadragesima,” from the Latin word for “forty.” The number of days from Ash Wednesday to Easter, not counting the Sundays, which are not days of fast, is forty. To help you make a profitable forty-day [...]

Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered today before reciting the midday Angelus with several thousand people gathered in St. Peter’s Square.* * *
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
Last Wednesday, with the fast and the rite of ashes, we entered into Lent. But what does it mean to “enter into Lent?” It means to [...]

keep looking »