From the Rector's Study ~
As a season that anticipates the conclusion of the shortened days and lengthened nights, the colder weeks and chillier months, Lent prepares people for the dawning of the springtime, the most literal translation of its name. And, by its spiritual definition, Lent prepares the heart and soul for the renewed dawn of the Light of Christ. The comparatively less hospitable weather of the season of our winter moves us to exercise a relative retreat into the refuge of our homes. So also Lent draws each of us to an inward spiritual retreat, an inward examination of our relationship of with God, of God’s relationship with you and me, personally.
The traditional practice of some sort of self-denial during this season exemplifies and supports this effort. For example, if one gives up his or her habitual Diet-Coke or coffee in the morning, then each time the habit ‘kicks in’ in, it reminds one powerfully of one’s intention to go deeper into the mystery of the knowledge and love of the Lord. Toward this end, and building upon the virtues of this tradition, I propose a new way for us together to engage this discipline here at ECR.
As you and I pursue our respective personal journeys through Lent this year, I invite each of us to examine also our collective relationship with God as the community of ECR. As a Lenten discipline, let us each deny himself or herself an exclusively personal Lenten journey, so that each time our personal self-denials remind us of our personal introspections, each of us may be reminded also of ECR’s journey into the Lenten examination of our collective relationship with God and of God’s relationship with us as this community. In your personal Lenten reflections, please meditate also upon the depths of our community’s collective experience of the sacrificial Love of God. Along with your offering of time for God in quiet prayer, please offer also attention to what it is that God has to reveal to all of us together about the width and depth of God’s generous grace. Along with listening for God inwardly and personally, please let each of us also invite God to speak that inward Word to us together here at ECR, calling us and guiding us in our collective expression of God’s Love for all.
The Lenten journey is always one that we make with God. We are not alone. Examining our relationship with God, our spiritual habits and practices, for both its strengths and its weaknesses is accomplished with courage that comes from God alone. Indeed part of theLenten experience is open ourselves willingly and willfully to the courage that God would give to us to make this journey. It is, then, to open ourselves to whatever it is about our relationship with God, and God’s with us, that we will never be able to experience alone, never be able to express alone, but only with the companionship of God and one another.
Pray, listen, watch for God’s call to you, God’s blessing for you. Pray, listen, watch also for God’s blessing and call for all of us together. As God shapes your own Lenten journey or mine, and its blessing, uniquely for each of us, so also God shapes these blessings uniquely for us together, this community of ECR, at the warmer brighter outcome of our journey.
God’s Peace.
Fr. Jim +
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