Lent Year C: Worship Course

The Lenten journey is not a smooth, rational, linear path. Again and again the readings chosen for us over these many weeks (in the Revised Common Lectionary) teach that following the Holy One is a surprising, counter intuitive, and costly way of becoming fully human and nurturing the divine within us. Before the journey is over we shall likely have lost much of our certainty and self satisfaction but we will have been offered such free and freeing extravagant love that I trust we shall know that we have been given much more than has been taken from us.

No matter how many times we walk this path there are ideas and images to be shaken loose and repented of, there are wounds we have not attended to or been ready to be healed of, and there are divine embraces and feasts to be enjoyed. Because the Lenten journey is very much the faith journey it is about letting go and receiving, being driven into the wilderness and ministered to, taking each step attentively even when the terrain we are travelling through is hard or momentarily uninspiring.

The true discipline of Lent is to give ourselves over to the process that just may make us new creations. But it can be hard so make sure that you have good travelling companions and if for any reason you are particularly fragile at the moment then you may want a different process that is gentler. Life may have done more shaking and shattering than you need already. It is alright to rest some years.

The season of Lent and Easter is a journey rather than a single event. It is a journey that takes us from Ash Wednesday through to Passion, or Palm, Sunday and Holy Week to the cross on Good Friday and to the joyous discovery that the tomb is empty and that Christ is risen on Easter Day. There are then 50 days of Easter that lead us to Pentecost. (In this Lent course we cover from Ash Wednesday to Passion or Palm Sunday with timely blogs for each of the Three Great Days of Holy Week). It is a journey that takes us through the deep waters of life and death to new resurrection life and it is good to have travelling companions on such a journey. Join us for this portion of your journey.

This course is designed to be used by worship leaders and by individuals wanting to journey with Jesus the Christ and his companions on this ‘life through death into new life’ experience.

Each week of Lent we will daily reflect on one of the readings for the coming Sunday building to an integrated reflection of the theme of that week. There is also an outline for a group discussion included for use by those communities studying together. If not studying in a group the same discussion questions might be useful in reflective journaling. This will help us engage deeply in the wisdom and life changing power of this journey and help worship leaders be ready for leading others on the journey while also having their own spiritual encounter

Week One: Letting Go of the Familiar. Like Jesus we leave behind for a time all that is familiar and the ready-made certainties of our life and head out into the sacred wilderness.

Week Two: Being Emptied. We consider the great self-emptying of Jesus in becoming one of us and we consider the self-emptying that life requires of us.

Week Three: Suffering as part of the Journey. In Lent and at Easter of course we think of the salvific effect of Jesus’ suffering for us but what of suffering in our life?

Week Four: Coming-To, Awakening, a long way from Home. Making our way home, being made anew, starting over, is only possible when we come to our self and awaken to our true state.

Week Five: Preparing the Self for Death. We look at the anointing of Jesus in preparation for his death and reflect on preparing ourselves for the many little deaths of this life and the eventual creaturely death.

Week Six: The Descent into Jerusalem. Palm Sunday and preparing ourselves to companion Jesus on his last days.

 “Easter, with its grace of interior resurrection, is the radical healing of the human condition. Lent, which prepares us for this grace, is about what needs to be healed.” (Thomas Keating, OSB, The Mystery of Christ).

Download the Course

Companions on the Way_Lent Year C_2025.pdf

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