Lent Lite: Catholic Meditations for Lent by St. Thomas Aquinas

Lent Lite gives you sixty-three days of Lenten meditations drawn from St. Thomas Aquinas. The lite version covers the odd-numbered days. There is a paid full version that fills in the rest.

Each day you get a short reading on a Lenten theme: the work of the vineyard, the goodness of God, the prayer of Christ in the garden, the meaning of His Passion. The selections come from Aquinas's sermons and commentaries rather than the Summa, so they are more pastoral than systematic. You can adjust the font size, zoom into images, and the app remembers your place.

Reading Aquinas as devotional material is something we do not do enough. Most Catholics meet him in a college philosophy class, if at all, and come away thinking he is all syllogisms. He is not. The man preached, and he prayed, and when he writes about the Passion of Christ as the price of our redemption, you hear a Dominican brother on his knees more than a scholastic at his desk. Lent is the right season to sit with that voice.

It works as a slow companion through Lent — five minutes after morning prayer, or before bed. It is also a quiet way to introduce older teens or RCIA candidates to a saint they have heard about but never actually read. The reflections are not long, and they do not require any theology going in.

It is the lite version, so half the days are missing. If you want all sixty-three, you will need the paid version. The translations are also serviceable rather than literary — they get the sense across without the rhythm Aquinas has in Latin. There is no audio.

Free. By Leonard Mamangkey. On the App Store: Lent Lite. A small, faithful app worth opening every other morning of Lent.