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Look & Listen

From Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday, we follow the account of Christ as he makes His way to the Cross. In Epiphany, we encounter the light of divinity dwelling on Christ, inviting us to join Him as the light of the world. In Lent, we recognize and mourn the curse of sin and death that has separated man from God, even as we are invited to carry our cross and follow Christ on the road of suffering. We grow in humility and gratitude with the Lenten practice of remembering that once we were alienated from God and lived as people with no hope, and we seek mercy for those still living in that state.

There's so much joy to be found in humility.  If you haven't ever fully entered into the practice of Lent, would you consider joining me this year?  May I encourage you that this doesn't (and shouldn't) be complicated.  Here are a few helpful posts from the past several years of preparing for Lent.

How We Prepare For Lent

Five Favorites: poems for Lent

Searching for Chometz: A Passover Practice That Instructs Our Lent

Living and Dying Palm: Part 1

Living and Dying Palm: Part 2

Read, Pray, & Do

I'll be posting a daily meditation centered around Scripture selected from the Book of Common Prayer lectionary along with a song, prayer, image, and spiritual exercise for each day in Lent. The Lent Daybook posts you normally find here are moving over to my Patreon page. In the spirit of Lent’s invitation, I welcome you to walk through the 40+ days of prayerful repentance with us.

Lent Daybook Meditations

The Lent daily devotional posts are available to those who subscribe to the Daybook Meditations ($5 a month) membership.

If you enjoy the Lent Daybook series, please invite your friends to subscribe too! The Daybook Meditations provide a beautiful experience to be able to share and talk about together.  If you’re on Instagram, you and your friends can also follow me there - a_sacramental_life.

Please feel free to email me your questions.

Mourning Stories for Holy Week

A Stories membership offers access to this meaningful series of guest posts.

Each year during Holy Week I invite several friends to share their own experience of suffering so that we may look together for the true Christ, always present to the suffering in us and around us. The guest writers tell stories of walking with Jesus on the path of suffering, and include every sort of mourning - illness, relational disillusionment, anxiety, joblessness, death of loved ones, death of dearly-held dreams. Their stories have helped form me in my understanding of suffering and I believe they could also encourage you too. 

Somewhere along the decade of my thirties I realized I needed a sturdier foundation for all the grief I saw in my own life and in the lives of people around me. I began to rely on others who could sit with me in my grief rather than try to persuade me out of it.  This became the sort of value that defined my relationships -- those who welcomed me into their own suffering and shared mine became my dearest friends.  

A few years ago during Lent as I researched mourning practices around the world for a writing project, I stumbled on the words of Ranier Maria Rilke in his Requiem for a Friend:

"Once, ritual lament would have been chanted; women would have been paid to beat their breasts and howl for you all night, when all is silent. Where can we find such customs now? So many have long since disappeared or been disowned. /

That’s what you had to come for: to retrieve the lament that we omitted."

This phrase "retrieve lament" added to my understanding that part of Christ's ministry to us through His life, His Spirit and His people is to "retrieve the lament that we omitted".

Toward that end, each day of Holy Week, I'll share one story of lament from a friend's account of suffering as a way to help us walk with Christ toward the cross. Jesus gave us a litany of last words as a Sufferer; we refer to them as the Seven Last Words of Christ. The deathbed words of the Suffering Servant provide a framework for the stories of lament we share each Holy Week and allow us to stay present with Christ from death to resurrection.

Lent & Holy Week posts from the archives

Recommended Reading for Lent