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Welcome to Lent
A word from Ish Lennox, our Faith and Church Relations Manager.
I can honestly say I love Easter more than Christmas and not just because the weather is getting better. It’s a beautiful season of realigning our hearts and reprioritising our lives again around God. I’m Scottish and did not grow up within the Episcopal church. My church background rarely mentioned Lent so the notion of prayer, fasting and charity as a tool to deepen my discipleship passed me by.
When my journey of faith brought me within the Anglican Communion and I learnt that each Lent we are encouraged to use these tools as we wait expectantly for God to meet us and sustain us through the storms and trials we all face, I felt like I had been given a rich and practical gift to help me draw close to God. I love the opportunity to watch and pray that Lent gives us and hope the resources that Mothers’ Union has created for you will help you find fresh ways to engage with this season.
Watch and Pray: Wisdom and hope for Lent and life is the Church of England’s Lent theme for 2024.
Watch and Pray invites us to seek God in both familiar and unfamiliar places this Lent: in darkness and in quiet, in movement and migration, in the healing and transforming work of the Spirit, in the weeping of Holy Week and in the joy of Easter morning.
On the night he was betrayed, Jesus kneels in darkness in the Garden of Gethsemane. Though he pleads with his disciples, “Stay here with me … Watch and pray,” they all fall asleep, leaving him alone in his hour of deepest suffering.
So much of Lent for me is the mindfulness of the season. Lent isn’t some kind of religious endurance test where the strongest believer wins. Lent reminds me of my own weakness rather than my own strength and this is a good thing. It’s good because it reveals to me my need for God, and in doing so it increases my desire for Him. It keeps me humble, rather than being puffed up with religious pride.
There is no perfect way to ‘run the race set out before us’ (1 Corinthians 9:24-27). We each have to find the resources that help us deepen our faith and help us develop our confidence to put that faith into action. I am confident that there will be something from this Lent offering that will help you this season.
Lent Calendar
Many of us are familiar with an Advent Calendar as an aid to help us count down to Christmas. I really appreciate a Lent Calendar to help me count up to Easter. Mothers’ Union’s Lent Calendar gives you suggestions to help you pray, fast and give.
Check out the 2024 Lent Calendar
Mothers’ Union Midday Prayers
This year you may be choosing to fast from busyness. If that’s you, I encourage you to join us in prayer as we gather Monday to Saturday on our Mothers’ Union Facebook page for Midday Prayer.
Walking the Way of the Cross
The Stations of the Cross are the traditional commemorations of the various stages of Christ’s journey towards Calvary. Engaging with this tool gives us a way of dealing with some of humanity’s darkest and deepest emotions. Praying the Stations of the Cross reminds us that we are not alone in our suffering. This resource not only helps us engage in our Lent journey but it will help us in our daily lives.
Walking the Way of the Cross book is available through Mothers’ Union’s shop here
Photo Meditations
This year during Lent, Archbishops Justin Welby and Stephen Cottrell are encouraging us to draw on the wisdom of black spirituality.
‘Praying through the Psalms’ has been produced by the Church Association of Sudan and South Sudan (CASS). There are six meditations to be used through Lent and is available here.
To help us think further about black spirituality, Mothers’ Union Midday Prayers during Holy Week will be led by six different black women members reflecting on their faith journey and leading us in prayer.
A good book
If having read all these options you think what you’d really like is a good book, then I’d like to suggest Women of Holy Week. This book by Paula Gooder is a series of nine stories about nine different, but interlinked, women as they accompany Jesus on his journey to the cross. This book is available via the Mothers’ Union shop.
Lots of options, too many to do them all. Pick one that appeals and dive in. Remember Lent isn’t some kind of religious endurance test rather an opportunity to watch and pray.
Written by Ish Lennox, MU’s Faith and Church Relations Manager