Great Lenten Resources

Aggie Catholics has a great post on tons of Lenten info, readings, videos, etc...worth a peak.

Ash Wednesday

And so, Lent begins and as usual my grandiose intentions of a well planned lenten season have failed before it even started.  This holy season is an invitation to return to the basics of our spiritual life--and perhaps I've stumbled upon the first lesson: don't over-complicate the simple.  Just resolve to focus on the three simple practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  Fr. Barron explains it well:

Pope Benedict's Ash Wednesday Audience

http://www.vatican.va/liturgical_year/lent/2012/index_en.htm

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today the Church celebrates Ash Wednesday, the beginning of her Lenten journey towards Easter. The entire Christian community is invited to live this period of forty days as a pilgrimage of repentance, conversion and renewal. In the Bible, the number forty is rich in symbolism. It recalls Israel’s journey in the desert, a time of expectation, purification and closeness to the Lord, but also a time of temptation and testing. It also evokes Jesus’ own sojourn in the desert at the beginning of his public ministry, a time of profound closeness to the Father in prayer, but also of confrontation with the mystery of evil. The Church’s Lenten discipline is meant to help deepen our life of faith and our imitation of Christ in his paschal mystery. In these forty days may we draw nearer to the Lord by meditating on his word and example, and conquer the desert of our spiritual aridity, selfishness and materialism. For the whole Church may this Lent be a time of grace in which God leads us, in union with the crucified and risen Lord, through the experience of the desert to the joy and hope brought by Easter

Cardinal Dolan on Ash Wednesday