Invitation to Lent

Friends in Christ, today with the whole church we enter into the coming days journeying with Jesus toward the cross; toward the death that ultimately brings resurrection and life.

Many of us will spend this holy season seeking renewal and opening our hearts to transformation through the practices of our faith. We begin by acknowledging our sin and our need for God’s mercy. We come to glimpse Christ who offers forgiveness and everlasting, abundant life. We are created to experience joy in communion with God, to love one another and to live in harmony with creation. But, turned in on ourselves, we fail to enjoy the life our creator intended.

As disciples of Jesus, we are called to disciplines that resist evil and whatever leads us away from love of God and neighbor. I invite you, therefore, to the disciplines of Lent – self-examination and repentance, prayer and fasting, sacrificial giving and works of love – strengthened by the gifts of word, sacrament and community. Let us continue our journey through these forty days to the great Three Days of Jesus’ death and resurrection.