Dear Friends,
As the season after the Epiphany begins to come to a close, the parish is looking ahead toward the next season in our liturgical life, Lent, a season that will be full of a wide variety of special programs, study sessions, music, and worship. It is important to remember, as we prepare, that this season is not about being sorrowful for forty days. It is not even merely about giving things up for that amount of time. Ultimately, Lent is the time to prepare for that great climax of Spring, Easter. Indeed, it may surprise you that the word “Lent” itself comes from an Old English word for “Springtime!”
In the earliest centuries of the Church, newcomers were baptized into the Church at Easter, the great celebration of the Resurrection, the triumph over death and the start of a new life. These catechumens were prepared for this event by a time of instruction and prayer and self-denial. There was deep conviction that all this helped to make them more spiritually nimble. And, so Lent began as a time when the Church was diligently preparing for new life with God.
It wasn’t too long before Lent also became associated with Jesus’ forty days of prayer and fasting in the desert wilderness. In our early history, it became more and more common for churches to strip away some of the decoration in Lent to make themselves look more austere. This would serve as an outer sign of their austerity within. Over time, the color used during Lent for vestments and hanging became purple: a serious color associated with penitence and judgment. In the Middle Ages, Christians began to honor the start of Lent by spreading ash on their foreheads as a solemn sign of their mortality, an observance we know as “Ash Wednesday.”
Please look ahead and find out more about all of the seasonal worship, programs, and study that the parish is offering to all who come or listen online. And please note that a few of our programs, like our Sunday Evensong Sermon Series, and our seasonal Family Feast Pancake Breakfast, actually take place slightly before Lent on Sunday, February 23. Be sure to consider well what personal practice you intend to take on during this approaching time, remembering that we do not see discipline or austerity as an end in itself. All of our practices are there to tidy our inner living rooms so that God’s life may have room to come inside and transfigure us at the Great Feast of the Resurrection.
In Christ,
Matthew Moretz+
