Entering a Holy Lent

Dear Friends,

This week, as we celebrate Ash Wednesday, we will be invited to pray for a good and holy Lent. I confess that I feel a bit of trepidation each year as Lent approaches. I long for a truly holy season—one in which space is cleared for God through prayer and fasting. And yet, I also know how easily the busyness of our calendars can crowd out the opportunity to enter this season thoughtfully.

My hope is that this brief note might offer you a moment to pause, take a breath, and consider how you would like to shape these forty days of preparation for Easter.

A verse from Morning Prayer recently stood out to me as a meaningful foundation for a Lenten fast. In Romans 12:1, St. Paul writes: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”

The phrase “living sacrifice” is an odd and striking paradox. In the biblical tradition, a sacrifice is an act of ritual destruction. Here, however, St. Paul takes this familiar idea and reimagines a sacrifice that is alive and transformative. As we offer ourselves to God during Lent, I do not believe God is asking us for acts of heroic self-denial. Instead, we are invited to bring our whole selves into participation with the living Christ. All that we are—our time, habits, speech, relationships, and work—become places where God’s sacrificial mercy can take hold and renew us.

This Lent, it is entirely appropriate to ask what we might set aside in order to clear space for God. But as we do so, it is also important to remember that we are offering our bodies—our whole selves—as a living sacrifice to God. What part of your life might you offer to God in hope of new and resurrected life? Whatever we offer, and however we offer ourselves, we can be sure that God’s work of new life is the promise that accompanies every sacrifice. With that hope, I wish you a happy and holy Lent.

With love in Christ,

Fr. Rob+