Lectionary readings (Click the links to see the readings):
Deuteronomy 30.15-20 | Psalm 1 | Luke 9.22-25

Beginning Lent (2)

Second part of a four-part extract from "Luminous Sorrow: in preparation for Lent" a sermon by S. Bulgakov.

[During Lent] the darkness of sin is pierced by the light of Christ's Resurrection. In fact, the entire spiritual tendency of Lent is determined by its connection with the coming Easter. …

Lent is also the good news about Easter; and the sorrow of Lent is only a pathway to the joy of Resurrection. In fact, it is called the "light-bearing" or "luminous" fast.

And the preaching about Lent contains not only a summons to repentance, but also the good news from which the repentance itself is engendered. The good news is about the Divine-sonhood of humanity, which bears the image of God. It is about the Divine Humanity in which God has united Godself forever with humanity and with the world.

—Sergius Bulgakov.^[1]

Prayer

Our Lord and heavenly Father, you have given to us your people the true bread that comes down from heaven, your son Jesus Christ. Grant that throughout this Lent we may continually live in him and he in us. Day-by-day may we be renewed in spirit by the power of his endless life.

Window from the Sagrada Família, Barcelona.

Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611). First Lamentation for Maundy Thursday. The Tallis Scholars, dir. Peter Phillips.

Filmed in the Chapel of Merton College, Oxford in 2011, to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of de Victoria's death.