Lent: Opportunity for rededication
https://archives.anglican.ca/link/article42762
- Author
- Swift, Diana
- Material Type
- Journal Article
- Journal
- Anglican Journal
- Date
- 2011 March
- Author
- Swift, Diana
- Material Type
- Journal Article
- Journal
- Anglican Journal
- Date
- 2011 March
- Volume
- 137
- Issue
- 3
- Page
- 6
- Notes
- "Most religions include periods set aside for fasting, abstinence, discipline, penitence, meditation and prayer. But for many modern Anglicans, the 40 weekdays from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday are not rigorously observed. And for the majority, the props of medieval Lenten piety -- sackcloth and ashes, the cat-o'-nine-tails, black bread and water -- have long since receded into the rearview mirror". "Yet for many contemporary Anglicans, Lent is alive and well in their personal annual calendars. And unlike Christmas and Easter, Lent has the distinction of being purely religious and not celebrated as a festive holiday by Christians and non-Christians alike. One Lenten observer is Stella Demery, a lay reader in the rural parish of MacDowall, near Prince Albert, Sask. For her, Lent is a time of intense meditation and Christian education". "Newcomer Cheta Agulefo arrived in Canada with his family last August [2010] from a community in Nigeria where Christians live side by side with Muslims. 'The Muslim practice of Ramadan has definitely influenced Christians', admits Agulefo, who worships at the Cathedral Church of St. James in Toronto. During Lent, he fasts every day from 6:00 a.m. until noon or 3:00 p.m." "Another St. James parishioner, Elizabeth Lang ... [says] 'I attend the annual Lenten lecture series and enjoy the beautiful simpler music of the season, such as plainchant'". 'Like Saskatchewan's Demery, Jonathan Lofft views Lent as a time to turn down the dimmer switch on social activities and become more meditative and abstemious". "In St. John's, 85-year-old Denise Rees most definitely observes Lent, and she thinks the church should make more of it". "Ten-year-old Thomas Haslam, a resident of Springfield, P.E.I., and the organist at St. Elizabeth's Anglican Church, considers Lent a time for getting prepared". "For Canon John Hill, a retired priest in Toronto, Lent is a prodromal period of confession, admission and rededication leading up to the crucifixion". "So in Hill's interpretation, the 40 days of Lent are a time of relearning 'to take up the cross and follow Christ by letting him expose in us our attachment to a culture that is in rebellion against the Kingdom of God".
- Subjects
- Lent
- Lent - Anglican Church of Canada
- Spiritual life - Anglican Church of Canada
- Demery, Stella
- Agulefo, Cheta
- Lang, Elizabeth
- Lofft, Jonathan S.
- Rees, Denise
- Haslam, Thomas
- Hill, John W.B. (John William Barnabas), 1944-