Lent

To prepare for the Passover Feast, believers in the Old Testament would remove all leaven from their homes. This "spring cleaning" was to symbolize the removal of sin from their lives.

Like the "spring cleaning" of our sin, Shrove Tuesday is historically the day Christians have gone to confession and eaten pancakes. The word "shrove" means to "absolve" or to "forgive," and pancakes include certain perishable ingredients Christians traditionally would not have consumed during Lent: eggs, milk, butter, etc.

At Resurrection, we host a Shrove Tuesday pancake dinner every year on the Tuesday night before Ash Wednesday.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return...

The English word ‘Lent’ comes from an early English word meaning to ‘lengthen’. Lent comes at a time when winter loosens its grip on the world, the days lengthen, and the promise of spring and new life is eagerly anticipated. And so it is with Lent, a time when we too can ‘lengthen’ spiritually, when we can stretch out and grow in the Spirit, as we await the resurrection.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, with a beautiful, counter-cultural, and deeply moving service, in which we receive ashes on our foreheads, and pray an expanded confession and litany of penance.

Lent is the forty day period of preparation for Easter. It’s a season that emphasizes spiritual discipline such as fasting, almsgiving, and prayer as means of preparing our hearts for the celebration of the resurrection. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has said Lent is “a time to sweep and clean the room of our own lives and hearts so that the new life really may have room to come in and take over and transform us at Easter.”

The English word ‘Lent’ comes from an early English word meaning to ‘lengthen’. Lent comes at a time when winter loosens its grip on the world, the days lengthen, and the promise of spring and new life is eagerly anticipated. And so it is with Lent, a time when we too can ‘lengthen’ spiritually, when we can stretch out and grow in the Spirit, as we await the resurrection.