For Lent: Reflections for the Journey

On February 21st, in preparation for the first Sunday of Lent, Bishop Susan shared a video message for the season, inviting us to reflection, prayer, and renewal. Her message includes a beautiful poem by Madeleine L’Engle, and below you’ll find the full text along with additional reflections and resources being used across the Diocese of Niagara to guide your Lenten journey.

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For Lent 1966
Madeleine L’Engle

It is my Lent to break my Lent,
To eat when I would fast,
To know when slender strength is spent,
Take shelter from the blast
When I would run with wind and rain,
To sleep when I would watch.
It is my Lent to smile at pain
But not ignore its touch.
It is my Lent to listen well
When I would be alone,
To talk when I would rather dwell
In silence, turn from none
Who call on me, to try to see
That what is truly meant
Is not my choice. If Christ’s I’d be
It’s thus I’ll keep my Lent.

Hi everyone. Bishop Susan here. 
Lent arrives each year with a quiet insistence. It doesn’t demand attention so much as it waits for it. In a culture that values certainty, speed, and accomplishment, Lent asks something quite different of us: patience, truthfulness, and a willingness to dwell with questions that don’t resolve quickly. Madeleine L’Engle in the poem I just read, wrote of Lent as a season that resists simplicity, a time that refuses the comfort of spiritual shortcuts. That refusal may be one of Lent’s greatest gifts.

Lent is often described as a season of repentance and self-examination, but too easily those words are reduced to lists of things to give up or habits to improve. While discipline has its place (I’m not knocking it), Lent isn’t primarily about self-perfection. It’s about truth. It’s about allowing ourselves to be seen by God as we are, rather than as we wish we were or believe we ought to be.  ‘Shoulds and oughts’ are not actually useful things in the life of faith.  Better to be present to what “is.”  This kind of honesty can be unsettling, because it asks us to acknowledge not only our sins, but also our fears and contradictions.
In L’Engle’s vision of Lent, there is little room for false certainty. Faith isn’t portrayed as something tidy or complete, but as something lived in tension—between belief and doubt, hope and despair, resolve and weariness. This is a deeply biblical understanding of faith. Scripture is full of faithful people who struggle, question, and resist God even as they remain in a relationship with God. Lent invites us into that same spacious honesty.

The temptation for us during Lent can be to try to control the outcome—to treat the season as a “spiritual project” that will yield results by Easter. 
But the wilderness Jesus enters is not a place of mastery. It’s a place of vulnerability. There, Jesus confronts hunger, temptation, and the very limits of human strength. So, I guess one of the first things to say is that Lent invites us not to escape our own wilderness experiences, but to pay attention to them, trusting that God is present even when clarity feels distant.

This can feel especially challenging in a world already marked by anxiety and uncertainty. We may wonder why the Church would ask us to sit with discomfort when so much already weighs on us. Fair enough.  But it’s worth remembering that Lent doesn’t add burden for its own sake. It creates space—a holy pause in which we can name what’s heavy, what’s broken, and what we can no longer carry alone. 
Lent teaches us that God doesn’t require us to be untroubled in order to be faithful.

One of the quiet truths of Lent is that transformation rarely happens through force. It happens through attention. When we pray, fast, give, or serve during Lent, we’re not earning God’s favour. We’re training our hearts to notice God’s presence—in our need, in our neighbour, and in the places we would rather avoid. Lent sharpens our awareness of the ways that we resist God’s grace, not so that we might condemn ourselves, but so that we might receive mercy more fully.

There is also, within Lent, a deep trust in time. What I mean by that is that forty days is long enough to feel the weight of waiting, but not so long as to extinguish hope. Lent teaches us that God works slowly, and that slow work is not lesser work. Seeds planted in this season may not show visible growth right away. That does not mean they are not taking root.
As we move through Lent, we are invited to give up the desire for easy answers and instead remain open—to God, to one another, and to the truth of our own lives. This openness isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It’s the courage to believe that God meets us not at the end of our striving, but in the midst of it.

Lent doesn’t end in the wilderness, thank goodness. It leads us toward the cross, and beyond it, to resurrection. But it does so honestly, without rushing. And that stands in contrast to the reality we live day by day that urges us to move quickly past pain and complexity. Lent invites us to stay, to listen, and to trust that God is at work even when the path is unclear. That trust, shaped slowly and faithfully, prepares us to receive Easter not as an escape from reality, but as God’s promise within it.

And so, all that said, may you have a holy Lent. 

Blessings.

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Since Ash Wednesday, individuals and parishes across the diocese have begun their Lenten journey with several resources. Rooted in Love: Lent Reflections on Life in Christ is a thoughtfully structured resource by Archbishop Sarah Mullally, archbishop of Canterbury. It is Bishop Susan's book choice for Lent this year and is suitable for individual use, small groups, and parish communities.

Alongside Hope also offers a daily devotional for the Lenten season called Wild Paths of Peace by Martha Jarvis. This resource ties together Jesus' demonstrations of peace-making with modern-day experiences on a global level and within our own personal relationships during chaotic times.

You may also wish to read some of the reflections of our diocesan clergy from the February and March editions of the Niagara Anglican by visiting niagaraanglican.news.