Church of the Advent

40 Pritchard Avenue , Toronto , Ontario M6N 1T3           

Telephone: 416-763-2713

Lent 2010

Lent is an invitation to make new resolutions, even though we may have almost given up on the ones we made at New Year’s!

Lent’s message is positive rather than negative because it’s about having the change to begin again.  That’s the meaning of repentance – to recognize what has gone wrong, and to change direction.  As we do so, we experience the miracle of God’s forgiveness, the forgiveness of others, and forgiveness of ourselves.

Self-denial is part of changing direction and finding the new path to forgiveness.  That’s because, more often than not, our internal compass directs us along the path of “me first”.  But the path of Love leads outwards towards others.  “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way…” (I Cor. 13: 4-5a).

Lent invite4s us to take the path of Love where we learn to put “we” and “ours” ahead of “me” and “mine’.  It is the path Jesus shares with us.  Jesus calls us to join him: “If any one would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).  The ‘self’ we are called to deny is our selfishness.  The new self we seek to develop is self-giving.

There is no better time for taking stock of our lives than during Lent, beginning with a practical, attainable plan.  The traditional ways of denying our self-centredness include almsgiving.  For example, by using Lenten coin cards and making special Lenten offerings we are choosing to live with less, and discovering that we can in fact make do with less. We gain a new freedom over our possessions, so that they do not possess us.

We can be grateful, then, for Evelyn Chipperfield’s Lenten ministry to us, on behalf of the Advent, in sending out (and collecting!) the cards, together with her personalized notes and communications through the year.

Yours in faith,

Fr. Jonathan Eayrs

Priest Incumbent