February 11, 2008

Dear Co-laborers with Christ,

The date of Easter is each year determined by the cycles of nature. The Festival of the Resurrection is celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. It is springtime, the season of rebirth and new life. As nature renews itself in the spring, we celebrate our spiritual rebirth through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ as observed in the entire paschal cycle from Ash Wednesday to Pentecost.

We are made of the stuff of the earth, yet filled and animated by the breath of God. On Ash Wednesday we face our mortality and the limits of our earthborn existence. Ashes are smeared on our foreheads and we hear the words first spoken by God to Adam and Eve following their disobedience: You are dust and to dust you shall return. This reminder of our mortality also reminds us of our abject and urgent need of God’s love and grace. With this ritual act – the imposition of ashes – we embark on a profound spiritual journey that will lead us from death to the waters of rebirth and the new life of the resurrection.

Lent is not only a time of solemn reflection and self-examination as we contemplate the passion of our Lord. It is also a time of joyful preparation and anticipation as we move from the shadow of the valley of death toward the early light of dawn at the entrance of the empty tomb. In a season of forty days, Lent moves us through the process of sin and redemption. We recognize that we are powerless over sin and can do nothing to save ourselves. We come to recognize that only the power of God’s grace can remove this power of sin from our hearts, minds, and lives. We seek to turn our wills over to the will of God completely, trusting only that the power of grace will lift this burden from us. We admit our faults. We seek to make amends to those we have wronged. We pray that God will make us whole, as only God can do. None of this is completely accomplished this side of heaven’s line, but this solemn season offers a blessed beginning once again. In this broken world, redemption, while a spiritual reality accomplished by grace through faith, is always a painful process, not an existential fact. We claim our baptism every day. We turn our will over to God each new morning.

During this season of Lent, prepare yourself and your people for Easter with regular, disciplined patterns of worship; claim and offer every opportunity you can for growth and learning through Bible study and Christian formation and education. Allow yourself to be nurtured by God’s grace in Word and Sacrament at every opportunity.

Lent is an opportunity, a chance for spiritual housecleaning and a refocusing on the things that really matter in life. In this time of traditional self-denial, do not deny yourself the things that matter most.

Faithfully, your bishop,

B. Penrose Hoover