Fellowship

Commit to worshipping with the church family every Sunday during the season of Lent. Plan out your week intentionally and prioritize the gathering of believers. Also, make plans for an Easter Celebration. It is the most significant day of our spiritual calendar and ought to be made a large deal of and looked forward to! Plan to cook your favorite meal and begin the feast with a toast to the risen Christ!

Fasting

Consider a “Lenten Fast” or act of self-restraint to help you engage this season more fully (many people give up alcohol, social media or certain forms of entertainment). As we remove distraction or means of comfort, we create space to look to God for formational and care.

Fasting seems miserable from the outside, but Jesus himself saw its value (fasting 40 days before his ministry!) and assumed his followers would do it (In Matthew 6, he says, “When you fast…”). When I have practiced this discipline, I generally find myself more sensitive to the Spirit’s leading in my life. It’s worth it. 

Feasting

If you notice, there are more than 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, and yet we emphasize that our Lenten fasts last for 40 days. This is because Sundays during Lent are known as “feasting days”. Every Sunday is a preview of Easter, and we break our fasts for a day of worship and celebration.

Prayer for the Season

You alone bring order to the unruly wills and affections of sinners: May we love what You command, and desire what You promise, so that, among the swift and varied changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joy is to be found

Prayer for Morning

Drive far from us all wrong desires. Incline our hearts to keep Your ways: Grant that having cheerfully done Your will this day, we may, when night comes, rejoice and give You thanks; through the One Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

Prayer for the Evening

You made this day for the works of the light, and this night for the refreshment of our minds and bodies: keep us now in Christ; grant us a peaceful evening, and a night free from sin, and bring us at last to eternal life; through the One Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

Prayers for Holy Week

Holy Monday (4/14): Your most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory but first he was crucified: Grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life an peace

Holy Tuesday (4/15): By the passion of your Divine Son, You caused an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son

Holy Wednesday (4/16): Your Divine Son gave his body to be whipped, and his face to be spat upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of our time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed

Maundy Thursday (4/17): Your Divine Son, on the night before he suffered death, instituted the sacrament of his Body and Blood: Grant that we may receive it thankfully, in remembrance of him, who in these holy mysteries gives to us a pledge of eternal life

Good Friday (4/18): We pray you graciously uphold this family, for whom Jesus was willing to be betrayed, and to suffer death upon the cross

Holy Saturday (4/19): The crucified body of your Divine Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this Holy Sabbath: give us grace to await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him into newness of life

Easter Sunday (4/20): Through Your Divine Son, You overcame death and opened to us the gates of the life that does not end: Grant that we who celebrate this day with joy may be raised from the death of sin by Your life-giving Spirit. Alleluia, He is Risen!