Journey together with Christ to the cross where our sin is put to death, and to the empty tomb,
where we are given new life in the risen Christ.

Lent is from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “springtime” and so is to be understood as the holy springtime of the soul, a time for preparation, planting, and growth. Like the father of the prodigal son (this story is one of the Lenten gospel readings, next year), God the Father invites us to return home.  Lent is a time for self-examination and repentance, but repentance always understood in its most graceful sense:  a turning away from death, and death-dealing habits and lifestyles, and a turning toward life, the abundant life given in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Lent is the holy springtime of the soul, a time for preparation, planting, and growth.

From a very early time in the history of the church of Christ, Lent was a time set aside for those people preparing for baptism (and originally they were almost all adults) to undergo instruction in the mysteries of the faith.  They were then baptized at the Great Vigil of Easter, the first service of Easter, after sunset on Holy Saturday – in the Jewish worldview the new day begins at sunset, and so for the earliest Christians, all of them Jewish, Easter actually began on Saturday night.

The season of Lent is a period of time set aside to help all Christians prepare to remember and celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord.  Lent prepares us for the great events of Easter, the centre of our faith.  Lent is not so much a chunk of the calendar as it is an opportunity for pilgrimage, for all of us who are baptized into Christ to remember that baptism and examine closely its relationship to our lives, to journey together with Christ to the cross where our sin is put to death, and to the empty tomb, where we are given new life in the risen Christ.

Signposts on the journey include the disappearance of the Alleluia and the Gloria, to remind us of the solemnity of the season.  Traditionally, flowers are not included in worship spaces for the same reason.  The colour of the season is violet or purple, for repentance.  The season is 40 days long (excluding Sundays), even as Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness preparing for his ministry, and the people of Israel wandered 40 years in the wilderness, preparing to enter the Promised Land.

But Why Ashes?

Lent is a time for self-examination and repentance, but repentance always understood in its most graceful sense:  a turning away from death and a turning toward the abundant life given in Jesus Christ our Lord.

As sign of repentance

In the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, ashes are used over and over again as a sign of humility and repentance.  People know that they have sinned before God and so they mark themselves with ashes.  Ashes, in a Jewish and Christian context, suggest judgement and God’s condemnation of sin.

As a reminder of mortality

When we hear the words from Genesis 3, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” we are reminded forcefully of our mortality and the words of the committal in the burial service, “…earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”  One day those words will be said over us; that doesn’t need to be morbid, but it is a powerful reminder that we are not God, and so Lent is time to give up our idolatry, even, maybe especially, of ourselves.

As a symbol of cleansing and renewal

Clear away the clutter of the past and in doing so, enrich the ground for a new future.

Ashes were once used as a cleansing agent in the absence of soap, and so they remind us that we need to be cleansed of our sin, as indeed we are in baptism.  A further example of death and renewal is the custom of burning fields so as to destroy the old and prepare the new, to clear away the clutter of the past and in doing so to enrich the ground for a new future.

As a visable sign of baptism,
a graceful reminder of who we are

The cross of ashes reminds us vividly that in baptism we were signed with the cross of Christ, forever. We belong to Christ.

Baptism is a primary emphasis of Lent and ashes have sometimes been understood as penitential substitute for water as a sign of baptism; as water both stifles and refreshes, drowns and makes alive, so the ashes also tell of both death and renewal.  Perhaps more importantly, the cross of ashes reminds us vividly that in baptism we were signed with the cross of Christ, forever, and that we always bear that sign on our brows.  We belong to Christ, and so there is joy for the journey, not just of Lent, but of life.

Holy Eucharist and Imposition of Ashes

Ash Wednesday Service
February 22
7:00 pm

You Visited Me…

Connecting with and  supporting those in our churches who have someone on the ‘inside’ and encouraging those who visit people in remand or one of the correctional institutions.

Tuesday, March 20th
Registration 4:30pm, wrap up at 8:45pm.
Meal will be served.

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church
600 Cambridge Street (Cambridge & Corydon)
Winnipeg, MB

If you or a loved one is, or has been in prison, if you do prison ministry, or have an interest in visiting those inside Bishops Elaine Sauer and Don Phillips  welcome you to participate in this free event.

Please RSVP by March 13th to:
Tom Collings 204-772-2892 or tomjulie at mts dot net
or Ken Kuhn 204-885-2821 or kenkuhn at mts dot net

On Sunday, February 12, 2012 both Anglicans and Lutherans alike took part in the Celebration of a New Ministry of The Very Reverend Paul N. Johnson as Incumbent of St. John’s Cathedral and the Dean of the Diocese of Rupert’s Land. Leaders of both communities, including Bishop Don Phillips, Bishop Elaine Sauer, ELCIC, and Archbishop and Metropolitan David Ashdown, were there for this special day in our churches’ history.

1 Corinthians 13

No plans for Valentine’s Day? 
Mary, from the North Point Douglas Womens’ Centre has invited the people of St. John’s to join them for their Perogy Dinner and Cake Auction Fundraiser on February 14, 2012.

6:30pm | Ministry of Property Management Meeting

Wednesday February 15

7:00pm | Vestry Meeting

Thursday February 16

12 Noon | Friendship Circle

Friday February 17

9:00am | Sewing of Choir Gowns
10:00am | Bible Study

Sunday February 19

9:00am | Choir Rehearsal

“A great prophet has arisen among us! God has visited his people!” Luke 7.16

for today’s readings, next Sunday’s readings and this week’s prayers,
read more

Today’s Readings

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
February 12, 2012

2 Kings 5.1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9.24-27
Mark 1.40-45

Next Sunday’s Readings

The Transfiguration of Our Lord
February 19, 2012

2 Kings 2.1-12
Psalm 50.1-6
2 Corinthians 4.3-6
Mark 9.2-9

In our prayers

In the Anglican Communion world-wide, we give thanks and pray for the Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Rev. Rowan Williams;
The Church of the Province of Central Africa, The Most Rev Albert Chama, Archbishop of Central Africa & Bishop of Northern Zambia.

In the Anglican Church of Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, and the Diocese of Rupert’s Land we pray for:

all Bishops, diocesan leaders (lay & ordained), throughout Canada, especially:

• Our Primate, Fred and General Synod Staff
• Our National Indigenous Bishop, Mark
• Our Metropolitan, David
• Our Bishop, Donald and his wife Nancy
• ELCIC Manitoba & North-Western Ontario Bishop, Elaine and her husband Rick
• Bishop Jackson and his wife Perusi of our Companion Diocese of Central Buganda
• Our Dean, Paul and his wife Melanie; Honorary Assistant Brian and his wife Mavis
• ELCIC Dean, Council and Congregations of the Kitchener-Waterloo Conference of the Eastern Synod

our congregations and communities, especially:

• For Indigenous peoples in the Diocese of Central Newfoundland
• For the Lugaaga Parish in the Diocese of Central Buganda, The Rev Canon Kosea Mugabi, Rector
• For the Diaconate Working Group-The Rev Dr Louise Cornell-Chairperson and Cordinator for Deacons’ formation The Rev Canon Peter Flynn
• For The Very Rev. Paul N. Johnson as he is installed as Incumbent of St. John’s Cathedral and Dean of Rupert’s Land

If our spiritual practices are not grounded in the stuff of our everyday lives,
all of this thinking and praying becomes meaningless.

Over the past while, I’ve written much about contemplative practices, prayer, deepening our spirituality, connecting with God and seeing reality from a different perspective. But if these practices and new ways of experiencing God are not grounded in the stuff of our everyday lives, all of this thinking and praying becomes meaningless.

It has been said that human beings are the only creatures who have been created with the faculty of reflection.  We are able to raise our experience to consciousness.  Rocks and sand may also have experiences but no ability to reflect.  In reflecting on our experiences we begin to realize that we are not only created, but also creators.   In reflecting upon our experiences, we find our purpose.

Our purpose is rooted in our relationship to God. The work of spirituality is to rejoin the one.  God is one.

Our purpose is rooted in our relationship to God.  The work of spirituality is to rejoin the one.  God is one.  Thomas Merton, a modern contemplative, discovered in his reflections that people are inseparable from God and from one another.  In becoming aware of this unity in God with all peoples, Merton had a deep experience of nondualism.  He found that he could not separate God from God’s creation, but also could not separate contemplation from concern for, and engagement in, the needs and problems of the age in which he lived.  God became incarnate and this created a bridge between divine and earthly.

Mature religion, Rohr says, involves changing ourselves and letting ourselves be changed by a mysterious encounter with grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

Our ability to reflect allows us to become aware of our experience of life at the level of ordinary consciousness – a kind of “one thing at a time awareness”.  But our reflective ability also allows us to center ourselves in the midst of an unconscious awareness at both the personal level and the collective level.  Getting to know God begins with getting to know yourself.   Richard Rohr reminds us in his book, The Naked Now, that only transformed people have the power to transform others, as if by osmosis.  Usually, he says, you can lead others only as far as you yourself have gone.  Too often we try to push, intimidate, threaten, cajole, and manipulate others.  It seldom works, because that is not the way the soul works.  In the presence of whole people; or any encounter with Holiness Itself, we simply find that, after a while, we are different – and much better!   Mature religion, Rohr says, involves changing ourselves and letting ourselves be changed by a mysterious encounter with grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

Use your imagination to create the world God is calling us to live into.  And then move — breathe life into your images of hope and healing and wholeness.

God has given us a new consciousness in what we call “prayer” and an utterly unexpected, maybe even unwanted, explanation in what we call “the cross”.  Part of that new consciousness involves using our faculty of imagination as a first step in creating a better world.  We see imagination being used to span the reality between heaven and earth in the New Testament book of Revelation – in John’s description of images while on the Isle of Patmos.  Great artists create visual images using the faculty of imagination.  The visual images artists create are a bridge between their inner world of image and form and colour and the outer world of art medium – paint and clay.  The images they create are a bridge between inside and outside – materiality injected with spirit.  Images are messengers – angels perhaps – places we have forgotten about.

Use your imagination to create the world God is calling us to live into.  And then move — breathe life into your images of hope and healing and wholeness.

All of this reflecting about image and imagination, the tension between inner and outer is rooted and grounded in our relationship with Christ.  This relationship is described by William Barry as being analogous to the kind of friendship that develops over a long time between two people. They are aware of each other even when they are apart or not engaging directly with each other. Although they may not be talking, at some deep level they are in touch with each other. Ignatius’s idea of contemplative-in-action has such a relationship with God. Engaging closely with God over time, we allow the Spirit to transform us into people who are more like the images of God we are created to be—that is, more like Jesus, who was clearly a contemplative-in-action.

The first step in creating a better world is imagining a better world.  We must spend time on the bridge of our imagination and be open to the energy God is creating to move us to action.  Use your imagination to create the world God is calling us to live into.  And then move — breathe life into your images of hope and healing and wholeness.

We are made holy
by our recognition
of God in us.
God is in all and everything.
But the reality of
God’s presence
only comes about
through human recognition.
Ah then!
We have the power
to sacralize the world.  

By Edwina Gateley; There Was No Path So I Trod One (1996).

If you would like to find out more about contemplation and action, please join us tomorrow for Tools for Responding to God: Reaching Out, the last session in the series Growing towards God,  facilitated by Nancy Phillips.

“He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.”
Matthew 8.17

for today’s readings, next Sunday’s readings and this week’s prayers, read more

Today’s Readings

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
February 5, 2012

Isaiah 40.21-31
Psalm 147.1-12,21c
1 Corinthians 9.16-23
Mark 1.29-39

Next Sunday’s Readings

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
February 12, 2012

1 Kings 5.1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9.24-27
Mark 1.40-45

In our prayers

In the Anglican Communion world-wide, we give thanks and pray for the Archbishop of Canterbury, The Most Rev. Rowan Williams; and The Most Rev Federick Hiltz, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

In the Anglican Church of Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, and the Diocese of Rupert’s Land we pray for:

all Bishops, diocesan leaders (lay & ordained), throughout Canada, especially:

• Our Primate, Fred and General Synod Staff
• Our National Indigenous Bishop, Mark
• Our Metropolitan, David
• Our Bishop, Donald and his wife Nancy
• ELCIC Manitoba & North-Western Ontario Bishop, Elaine and her husband Rick
• Bishop Jackson and his wife Perusi of our Companion Diocese of Central Buganda
• Our Dean, Paul and his wife Melanie; Honorary Assistant Brian and his wife Mavis
• ELCIC Dean, Council and Congregations of the Hamilton-Niagara Conference of the Eastern Synod

our congregations and communities, especially:

• For Indigenous peoples of the Anglican Parishes of the Central Interior, BC
• For the Diocesan Anglican Fellowship of Prayer-The Rev Diane Guildford, Diocesan Coordinator

St. John’s Cathedral will welcome the Diocese, Lutheran Full Communion partners, and many guests, for this joyful Eucharistic service of thanksgiving and celebration. Please plan on being part of this event if you possibly can! Remember, it’s our ministry we’re celebrating. Thanks be to God.