From the Deacon’s Bench - Lent 2025
By Canon Ken

Do you undertake anything in particular for Lent? Lent is meant to be that 40 day period during which we can prepare for Easter. Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert. Elijah fasted for 40 days. Moses fasted for 40 days prior to receiving the 10 Commandments. Until the 6th century, during Lent Christians fasted in the same manner that Muslims do now during Ramadan. In some parts of the world, there are still some Christians who engage in this type of fasting.

The western church isn’t one for this type of dedicated and lengthy fasting. Some give up some sort of personal pleasure for the 40 days. No chocolate or no alcohol for the 40 days. Others may be more intentional around prayer or reading a daily Lenten devotional. Perhaps a book that can support our faith. In some fashion, we are meant to be intentional in focusing on God, our relationship with God and our relationship with our neighbour.

In his book, Lent is About Transformation, Father Richard Rohr questions the modern emphasis on sacrificing small things, like ice cream, and pushes back on the discourse around striving during Lent. Rohr writes, “We do need an emotional charge to make most decisions, adopt specific behaviors, ‘give up candy for Lent,’ or make some changes in our life. But Jesus is not talking about changes. He is talking about change! Many changes might well be good and even needed, and surely some changes will result from any shaking of the foundations, but they are not what we mean by Biblical conversion or transformation (‘changing the form itself’).” Rohr asks instead that we “surrender” during Lent. “This is the real "try
harder" that applies to Lent, and its ultimate irony is that it is not a trying at all, but an ultimate surrendering, dying, and foundational letting go. You will not do it yourself, but it will be done unto you by the events of your life. Such deep allowing is the most humiliating, sacrificial, and daily kind of trying! Pep talks seldom get you there, but the suffering of life and love itself will always get you there. Lent is just magnified and intensified life.”

So if Lent in about transformation, what can we do to facilitate that? Be open to God in every aspect of daily life. Get to know God better. See God in all parts of the world around us. Know that God is with us as we go day to day through the 40 days of Lent.