the Merry Quarantine to Come

What ought to make us sorrowful, of course (and which really does, though for specks and planks we often cannot see it) the state of sin. Beatitude is met through the narrow path that connects these leading lights: the knowledge (a good thing) of sorrow's nature (also, from Creation, good) as the warning about sin. Follow that narrow path to safe harbour! "Rend your hearts, not your garments", and if I do, then the divine surgeon can make a new heart in me. Goodness knows, I need it. If doing these things also makes us happy, then rejoice! (For, of course, you already are!) I write this becase:

That Dame Who Would Be Saturday warns us against Brian Brother Blessed.

Actually, no, the Public Service Announcement warns us that Ash Wednesday is Coming. Like, this week. Or, as the web-log-writer known only as sibi (self-publishing under the tautological "me", and who would appear to appear (don't forget yours truly) cat-like) put it, Happy Quinquagesima!

OK, most everyone in the world will read this not before the feria primum thereof (it already is, here), but all the same […]. Or, perhaps, even more so! In any case, such is the furthest extent of announcements in the public service legible in Miss Hebdomada's note, after which she proceeds to luxuriate in heresies the good scriptrix has previously written against. Obviously, it is all in good fun. As is all of this!

But, really, who ever said that Lent should make one gloomy? (Come to that, who needs Lent before they are gloomy?) That sounds like entertaining sloth, which obviously is willing to wrong, which is itself wrong. So! Remember:
$$ \frac{\vdash \mathrm{Prosecco}}{\vdash \diamond (\mbox{God loves us and wants us to be happy})} $$
with, of course, Uncle Gil's caveat that the prosecco is for when you're already happy.

Since the Season of Lent is a gift of God through the Church, it is clearly a means to our happiness, and any suspicion of duplicity in the shape of anticipated happiness before any good act is done is a diabolical distraction from which you should now distract yourself, say, with some Shrove Tuesday festivity.