While Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, it is not, as Vicki Black writes in Welcome to the Church Year: an Introduction to the Seasons of the Church Year, "a long, dark, somber Ash Wednesday." While Lent gives us the opportunity to face all the ways we are separated from God, one another, and the earth, and to confess or tell the truth about those separations, it is also a time for growing deeper in faith. It is a time for making commitments we can keep: to pray or read scripture more regularly, to serve our neighbors in need, to make ourselves more open and vulnerable to what God might bring before us each day.

 Lent is, as I mentioned in my Ash Wednesday sermon, a gift. It is an opportunity provided by the church to stop, look, listen, and to take an honest look at our lives and relationships. Are we becoming the person God created us to be? Are we using our gifts for God's glory and to help others? What is getting in the way of the abundant life God wishes for us?

Throughout Lent St. Matthew's provides services and learning opportunities so that we can come together with other Christians and seekers for worship, contemplation, co-learning, honest discussion, and encouragement. Please also feel free to come and use the side chapel or Library (the church gets pretty cold during the week!) for prayer, or to say the Daily Office (the Book of Common Prayer services of Morning or Evening Prayer). You are also welcome to join us every noon in the Library for Noonday Prayer, dwelling in the scripture lessons for the coming Sunday, and praying through the church prayer list in more detail than is possible on Sunday.

While we confess our sins together every Sunday, there is a rite in the Book of Common Prayer called "The Reconciliation of a Penitent" (p. 447) which provides the opportunity for confession with a priest or a member of the faith community you trust and respect. If there is something you have thought, said, or done that you wish to confess to another before God, prayerfully, and in confidence, this is a wonderful way to do it. The Rev. Bob Hardman and I are available during Lent to meet with you for conversation and, if you so desire, to use this rite of reconciliation to formally handover whatever burdens you are carrying to God, and to receive God's word of grace and mercy.

Time passes so very quickly! It is my prayer that we all take advantage of the season of Lent to pause, to rest in God's loving presence, to face those things that are roadblocks to our spiritual growth and trust in God, and to commit to some sort of daily practice that will help us, in the words of Brother Lawrence, "practice the presence of God." That practice may be as simple as getting up fifteen minutes early just to listen to God over a good cup of coffee, reading through one of the Gospels (we are moving through Luke this year), showing up for the Saturday morning Centering Prayer group, making a list of the people you need to make amends with, and then meeting with them one-on-one, doing Morning or Evening Prayer online using the user-friendly Mission St. Clare app or website, http://www.missionstclare.com/english/, or taking time each night to review our day, giving thanks for what was good, and asking God to help us learn from our mistakes or missteps.  

If you are having trouble coming up with a spiritual practice you are excited about, I encourage you to read Brian McLaren's Finding Our Way Again: the Return of the Ancient Practices. I also encourage you to talk to your fellow parishioners who engage in a daily spiritual practice, including spiritual directors Dan Johnson, Lisa Wiens Heinsohn, and Lis Christenson, Benedictine Oblates Marilyn Grantham and Cindy Land, or Bob Hardman, Dwight Zscheile, or me.

Wishing you a most Holy Lent,