The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

You are invited to pray the Most Holy Rosary at the Port Arthur Mardi Gras at 1:00 PM, Saturday, Feb. 14. Also, let your friends know about the Living Rosary and invite them to bring their Rosary and join us at Mardi Gras in praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.

Email Stephen Sellars at [email protected] or call (409) 658-6020 if you and/or a friend would like to participate. I need to have a list of participants at the entry gate on or before Feb. 12.

Living Rosary participants will have free entry to the Mardi Gras if their name in on the Rosary Participant List. You will need to enter through the Waco Street south gate (by the main Sertoma Pavilion)

Many people are not aware there is a correlation between Mardi Gras and the Lenten Season. The intent of praying the “Living Scriptural Rosary” in public at the Port Arthur Mardi Gras is to help inform folks attending the festival that Mardi Gras does have a religious connotation. To many misinformed folks, a Rosary is just like a string of beads that people could throw around at Mardi Gras. They do not understand the Rosary is a tool for prayer, is based in scripture, and tells the life history of Jesus.

Mardi Gras, literally "Fat Tuesday," has grown in popularity in recent years as a raucous, sometimes hedonistic event. But its roots lie in the Christian calendar, as the "last hurrah" before Lent begins on AshWednesday.

What is less known about Mardi Gras is its relation to the Christmas season, through the ordinary-time interlude known in many Catholic cultures as Carnival. (Ordinary time, in the Christian calendar, refers to the normal "ordering" of time outside of the Advent/Christmas or Lent/Easter seasons.)

Carnival comes from the Latin words carne vale, meaning "farewell to the flesh."

With your participation we hope to educate our misinformed Brothers and Sisters.

You are all welcome to make this another evangelizing service event by participating and showing the unity of the Catholics within and beyond the Beaumont Diocese at this Mardi Gras on Feb. 14 to support praying the Living Rosary.