A Holy Lent : A Season of Prayer, Repentance, and Renewal

About this episode

Bishop Michael Hunn introduces Lent as a season of preparation for Holy Week and Easter, emphasizing prayer, repentance, and discipleship.

A Holy Lent: Discipleship, Confession, and Prayer Book Practices A message to the Diocese of the Rio Grande introducing Lent as a season of wilderness that prepares Christians for Holy Week and Easter by recalling Jesus’ temptation in the desert. Drawing from the Ash Wednesday liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer, it explains Lent’s purposes: training disciples (including preparing converts for baptism), and restoring those estranged by sin through penitence, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The speaker invites viewers to observe a holy Lent through self-examination and repentance, prayer, fasting and self-denial, and reading and meditating on Scripture. Practical suggestions include joining the diocesan discernment program run by the Commission on Ministry for vocational discernment (lay or ordained), and reading resources such as Living the Sabbath (Norman Wirzba), Reconciliation: Preparing for Confession in the Episcopal Church (Martin Smith) with guidance on both general and private confession, Mary Earle’s introduction to the desert mothers, The Calling of the Laity (an anthology compiled by Verna Dozier) on lay vocation, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship…

Topics covered

• Lent
• prayer
• repentance
• renewal
• discipleship
• confession

Keywords

• Ash Wednesday
• Book of Common Prayer
• self-examination
• fasting
• meditation on Scripture

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Compline, Living the Sabbath, Reconciliation: Preparing for Confession in the Episcopal Church, The Calling of the Laity, The Cost of Discipleship, Life Together

Books & works: the Book of Common Prayer, Scripture, Living the Sabbath, Reconciliation: Preparing for Confession in the Episcopal Church, The Calling of the Laity, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, The Archbishop’s Test, Evensong, Morning and Evening Prayer, Bonhoeffer for Lent

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