Today we enter the Holy Season of Lent. It is a time of self-examination, reflection, sober assessment, repentence and renewal. I pray that this Lenten season will be blessed by God, and that our commitment to being apprentices of Jesus will be strengthened and deepened in our lives.

Here is the schedule of Lenten activities:

Today            6:00pm          Ash Wednesday Eucharist  

3/21/10       9:00am           First Sunday of Lent

3/23/10       5:30pm          Evening Prayer

3/24/10       6:00pm          Soup Supper/Lenten Teaching

Each week of Lent we will celebrate the Eucharist on Sunday, will have Evening Prayer on Tuesday, and Soup Supper on Wednesday. This will take us through March 24, 2010.  March 28th is the start of Holy Week, and I will post the schedule for Holy Week later.

The three traditional practices of Lent are Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving. In the Anglican tradition there is no set way to carry out these practices. Your Lenten practices are between you and God. I would say that there is a wealth of tradition which can guide you in your Lenten Journey.

Lent is widely thought of as a time of “giving something up.”  The practice of denying yourself something can indeed be beneficial if it is done in the right way. It is training for your will/spirit in exercising control over your thoughts, feelings, and body. We modern people are often enslaved to our thoughts, feelings, and bodies, so any training in self-control is good.

But just giving something up is not helpful if you don”t fill that space in your life with something else. I fast regularly on Fridays. I can testify to the positive effects in my spiritual life. But the going without food is only the very basic thing. Whenever I fill hungry on Fridays, I pray and turn my thoughts to God. For 3000 years God’s people have been fasting (giving things up, whether food, pleasures, experiences, etc). Jesus did not say, “If you fast….,” rather he said, “When you fast….” !

If you are his apprentice - learning to do what he did – you will learn to fast. How you do it is up to you and Jesus. If you need any help figuring this out, please call me or email me.

Father David