Tonight I began my 72nd journey into Holy Lent, though I have no recollection of the very early journeys when I was an infant and small child.
My earliest memories of Holy Lent are wrapped in feelings of sorrow and darkness and lack of joy. I recall sad hymns, sung during mid-week Lenten services. It was almost like attending a funeral every week for six weeks. And the focus during those six weeks was always on the suffering and death of Jesus. At every mid-week Lenten service (tho' they were actually held on Friday nights during my childhood!!), we always heard a portion of the conflated story of our Lord's passion and death, pieced together from the Synoptics and John.
Thank God for Vatican II, as well as for the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship (and its wonderful production, Lutheran Book of Worship,) for reserving the major focus of our Lord's suffering and death to Holy Week ... and for making of Holy Lent a time of the Christian's participation in the discipline of Lent--repentance, fasting, prayer and works of love--which help me to wage spiritual warfare during this season.
And, as ashes, in the form of a cross, were traced on my forehead tonight, I am reminded again that I am mortal and will return to the dust from which I was taken.
I am grateful for another opportunity to join fellow pilgrims during Holy Lent 2010.
