Dear friends,
The Temptation of Christ in the Desert by Felipe Gomez de Valencia, c. 1676.
We are nearing the season of Lent, the forty-day season in the church’s year where we are invited to reconsider and reimagine our relationship with God.
Shortly after Jesus is baptized, he is sent by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights. During this time, he fasts from food and takes the time to strengthen his own heart for the ministry which is set before him. And even though he is tempted to turn away from his purpose on several occasions, he returns from the wilderness steadfast in the path of reconciliation and healing that is his. Thus begins his adult ministry, which culminates in his suffering and death, but then resurrection, which we of course celebrate at the great feast of Easter at the end of Holy Week and Lent.
In addition to our specifically following in Christ’s footsteps, Lent as a season was also originally designed as a time when new converts to the Christian faith were prepared for baptism, confirmation, and reception into the church. And so, new members would meditate on Christ’s journey towards Jerusalem as they began their own preparation for the sacraments which would enable them to more fully take their place within the life of Christ’s church.
This week, at St. John’s, we, too, begin our own journey of shared fasting, prayer, and re-orientation. On Shrove Tuesday, we will share a great and joyful feast but then participate in traditions such as “burying the alleluias” (where we put the celebratory word “alleluia” to one side for our time of Lenten fasting and penitence) and burning the previous year’s palm crosses for the ash we will use the following day to mark ourselves with the sign of the cross. Thus, on Ash Wednesday we turn from a time of celebration to one of deeper, more prayerful engagement, where we contemplate the mystery of our faith anew. The sign of the cross in ash being a reminder of our mortal nature and our utter dependence on God that we need in order to become a new creation in him.
Archbishop Rowan Williams (Photo by Brian from Toronto CC BY-SA 2.0)
This will be the theme of our adult education series, where Devon and I will be inviting our congregation to be Journeying Together Through Lent as a community. As we reach Shrove Tuesday, there will be both online and paper copies of a small study with which the congregation may engage. There will also be a small book for the children in our Sunday School and their families, Praying Through Lent, following the Godly Play Faces of Easter series, and “Why?” in Lent, a book study for middle and high school students. For all three study series, each week in Lent there will be scripture readings, prayers, and, for the adults, a fast which we can share in. For Journeying Through Lent, there will also be gatherings during Wednesday evenings where we will go deeper into the weekly themes. Central to this will be our reading of an essay by former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, “On Being Creatures,” which explores the theme of new creation and dependence on God, and which is the underlying focus of our Lenten study. By studying and fasting together, we will be able to engage in one of the central elements of Lent, that is, to participate in this journey together. And even if you cannot make all of the services or gatherings in this season, these study booklets and our prayerful responses might help us maintain our connection with one another nonetheless.
Rather than fasting individually or giving something up, and instead by studying, praying, and even fasting as a communal exercise, we might reconnect also with the original intention of Lent as a season in the church: a way to become closer to our neighbor and to God’s creation in the midst of our spiritual journey. For, despite the ways in which spirituality is often defined today, in truth it is never an individual pursuit, it is always communal: something which is so necessary given the world that we currently inhabit.
I hope to see as many of you as possible at our Shrove Tuesday celebration, at the Eucharist on Ash Wednesday, and throughout the Lenten season at the Eucharist where, week by week, we may grow more deeply and more truly into the heart of God’s own desire for us.
With love and every blessing,
Ed.
The Rev. Edward Thornley
Rector of The Episcopal Parish of St. John the Evangelist