“Even Jesus who is the Lord of Lords and the king of kings fasted and prayed in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. How much more we need to do the same with all our sinfulness and baggage.”  — Tamara Lane

1. “Are you capable of risking your life for someone? Do it for Christ.” — Pope John Paul II

2. “Lent comes providentially to reawaken us, to shake us from our lethargy.” — Pope Francis

3. “As Lent is the time for greater love, listen to Jesus’ thirst…’Repent and believe’ Jesus tells us. What are we to repent? Our indifference, our hardness of heart. What are we to believe? Jesus thirsts even now, in your heart and in the poor — He knows your weakness. He wants only your love, wants only the chance to love you.” — Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

4. Some people think that having ash on your forehead is ridiculous. But I am neither ashamed nor afraid because the ashes remind me that I have to someday pass away and reunite with my creator. — Walter Buns

5. “The most important thing a born-again Christian can do is to pray.” — Chuck Smith

6.“Prayer is where the action is.” — John Wesley

7. “The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist.” — Pope St. Gregory the Great

8. “Prayer is reaching out after the unseen; fasting is letting go of all that is seen and temporal. Fasting helps express, deepen, confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, even ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.” — Andrew Murray

9. “Nothing, how little so ever it be, if it is suffered for God’s sake, can pass without merit in the sight of God.” — Thomas A Kempis

10. “Fasting makes sense if it really chips away at our security and, as a consequence, benefits someone else, if it helps us cultivate the style of the good Samaritan, who bent down to his brother in need and took care of him.” — Pope Francis

11. “Whoever wishes to be my follower must deny his very self, take up his cross each day, and follow in my steps.” — Luke 9:23

12. “One should never initiate anything that he cannot saturate with prayer.” — Unknown

13. “Prayer does not change the purpose of God. But prayer does change the action of God.”  — Chuck Smith

14. “Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our persons, but they are helpless against our prayers.” — Sidlow Baxter

15. “You can do more than pray after you have prayed; but you can never do more than pray until you have prayed.” — A.J. Gordon

16. “Lent is like a long ‘retreat’ during which we can turn back into ourselves and listen to the voice of God, in order to defeat the temptations of the Evil One. It is a period of spiritual ‘combat’ which we must experience alongside Jesus, not with pride and presumption, but using the arms of faith prayer, listening to the word of God and penance. In this way we will be able to celebrate Easter in truth, ready to renew the promises of our Baptism.” — Pope Benedict XVI

17. “We all suffer for each other, and gain by each other’s suffering; for man never stands alone here, though he will stand alone hereafter; but here is he is a social being, and goes forward to his one of a large company.” — Cardinal John Henry Newman

18. “Everything in life has its own time. There is time to celebrate and there is time to mourn. This is the time for reflection and transformation. Let us look within and change into what we ought to be.”– Aaron Saul