From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

Lent is just around the corner. March 2 is Ash Wednesday and then begins our solemn observance, by penance and fasting, of a season of preparation. Now, I know that some of you may have chuckled at “penance and fasting.” Maybe you’re not one for confessions and repentance. Maybe you don’t do much by way of fasting during Lent.

Neither of those acts—penance and fasting—are very much the American way. 

Americans do guilt well. We do blame extremely well. We do shame—both shaming others and feeling deep-seated shame personally that makes us feel less than or unworthy.

We don’t really do fasting. We do diets. That may be tied up with the shame and shaming. We do starvation—we’re way too comfortable with how little too many have to eat.

However, I think this would be a much better country if we were better at penance and fasting. If we were honest about our faults and where we’ve failed, and then committed to a different future, I believe we could have a more decent, kinder, and healthier society. If we were able to praise penance—to lift up those who take seriously the work of reconciliation and restoration—then it might encourage more of it.

We need people who are trained in the way of penance. We need people skilled in the art of growing in their compassion for having gone more deeply into the places we’re too eager to hide. The deepest people I know are not those who have been holy and blameless their whole lives. The deepest people I know are those who have wrestled and lamented and learned to be more present to their own faults so they can forgive those of others.

The deepest people I know are also the ones who know how to pause. They know how to take a breath between one kind of consumption and another to appreciate and give thanks for the blessings of their lives. They know how to fast—how to take a break from taking so they can focus on being.

Imagine a world where more people knew how to do penance and fast. It would be more honest—less competitive, more generous—less censorious, more compassionate—and less angry.

So we, the Church, prepare for this season of penance and fasting because we long to be a people who look more like Jesus. We long to be a people who are able to break the cycles of recrimination and consumption—the cycles that have been at the heart of sin upon sin since the world began.

May this season ahead be one of deepening faith, awakening hope, and a period when you find yourselves walking more lightly, and ever closer, with God.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert