Dear Editor:
Ash Wednesday arrived early this year on Feb. 14 – because Easter is early this year: March 31. The time between those two dates for Christians is a time called Lent.
Lent, the 40 days (plus six Sundays) that lead up to Good Friday and Easter, is a time of reflection and spiritual growth. Some people give up habits or certain foods – as a kind of fasting.
It intrigues me that this year Dry February and Lent overlap – giving up alcohol for both physical and spiritual health. Some people take up a new pattern or practice in their lives, such as writing a letter a day to a friend, a relative, an enemy. Seeking to offer encouragement or to express the desire for reconciliation.
Others commit themselves to showing compassion and care to the people they encounter during their day. Still others adopt new or renewed patterns of prayer and reflection on spiritual readings. Lent is a time of spiritual renewal for body, mind, heart and soul.
Such patterns and actions, and more like them, are done humbly, quietly, in service to Jesus whose life, death and resurrection are the motivation and the reason for these acts of charity and spiritual practices.
Peter Bush,
Fergus