Loading...Beloved,
Notices of parish Mardi Gras meals and Pancake breakfasts and dinners mean the concluding days of the Season after the Epiphany are at hand. “Alleluias” will be buried, and palms will be burned as we prepare to gather for the start of the Lenten pilgrimage.
Like you, before Ash Wednesday arrives, I am giving thought to how I will mark this season when the celebrant invites us to the observance of a holy Lent. This year, the prophet’s concept of a fast feels particularly challenging:
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,…
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them? (Is 58:6-7)
My Lenten journeys in recent years have begged me to consider how “giving up something” as well as “taking on something” will produce the fruit Isaiah envisions resulting from a holy fast. How can my Lenten practices lead me to love God more deeply and my neighbor the same way?
Our Prayerbook provides two prefaces for the Eucharist in Lent. One speaks of Christ overcoming temptation and seems especially appropriate early in the fast. The second reads that God bids us to cleanse our hearts, and prepare with joy for the Paschal feast, that fervent in prayer and in works of mercy, and renewed by Word and Sacrament, we come to Easter’s joy.
Each year, as I either face how poorly I have maintained my chosen observances, or, how proud I am at keeping my practices, I eventually realize the observances have almost become ends in themselves, and I am not as prepared as I sincerely wish to be for the Passion and Resurrection. But we are at the threshold of a new Lent, and by grace, may it be different this year!
May our Lenten journey lead us as individuals and as a diocesan community, deeper into the life of the Risen Christ, so that come the Day of Resurrection, we can truly shed the old life of sin and be raised to newness of life.
May these final days of Epiphanytide fill us with light and hope.
+Terry
