The Season of Lent by Eron Perry

I enjoy the seasons of the year. On the whole, I enjoy most of them — Winter, Autumn, and Spring in moderation. Summer… well, that’s another story. Too humid for my liking. 

But I do enjoy seasons. They help mark the passage of time. (Honestly, it feels like Christmas was yesterday). I grew up in the Anglican Church, and the season of Lent was always significant for me. 

As a kid, Lent mostly meant Easter was just around the corner. It was also the time our family would make a pilgrimage of sorts, travelling across country NSW and Southeast Queensland to see relatives. Wherever we ended up, we always found ourselves in church on Easter morning. Looking back, it felt a little like landing home after a longhaul flight. 

As I grew older, Lent gradually took on a more sacred and poignant tone. We were encouraged to give up something of personal value. For years that was chocolate. One year it was coffee — and Jane, my wife, made me swear never to do that again. Apparently, I was a right miserable terror to live with over those particular forty days. 

Eventually I realised Lent wasn’t just a personal endurance test or a chance to prove how long I could live without chocolate. It was part of something much older and deeper — a season the Church has carried for centuries, shaped long before any of us were here to observe it. My little Lenten experiments sat inside a much larger story. 

Many of you will know this already, but if you’re new to the Anglican tradition, Lent is also a season of learning. Lent didn’t begin as a season on its own. In the early Church it sat right after Epiphany — those moments when Jesus’ identity is revealed: the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, the Wedding at Cana. Just as Jesus went straight from his baptism into the wilderness, so too the early Church moved from Epiphany into a time of preparation. 

Very quickly, though, Christians tied Lent to Easter — the great baptismal feast. It became the season when new believers prepared for baptism, and when those who had stepped away from the community were welcomed back through repentance and reconciliation. 

That’s why Lent carries the tone it does: a season for selfexamination, honesty, repentance, simplicity, study, and preparation for Easter. I’ve always seen Lent as living simply with Jesus. Christians also added almsgiving, because turning back to God always turns us outward to others. 

As new Christians were taught the faith, and as penitents prepared to return to communion, the whole Church joined them — learning again, praying again, turning to Jesus again. Stretching this over forty days reminded everyone of Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, tested and strengthened for his ministry. 

Ashes have long been a sign of repentance. By the Middle Ages, Christians began Lent by being marked with ash in the sign of the cross — a reminder of our mortality and our need for God’s mercy. 

Different traditions counted the forty days in different ways, but in the Western Church we now count from Ash Wednesday through to the end of Holy Week, not including Sundays. The worship of this season is simple: no flowers, no decoration, no Gloria. It’s a time of stripping back the excess and living and worshipping in a simple manner. 

As we move toward Holy Week, the tone deepens. The readings begin to lean toward the Passion, and the Fifth Sunday became known as Passion Sunday because of this shift. 

Alongside the set liturgy, Christians have long used devotional practices in Lent — the most familiar being the Stations of the Cross, shaped and shared widely by the Franciscans after they became custodians of the holy sites in Jerusalem. 

Lent, at its heart, is the Church walking with Jesus into the wilderness — into honesty, into repentance, and finally into the mystery of Easter. Lent is deliberate. It is a deliberate turning back to Jesus. A deliberate time of humility and selfexamination. A time where we adopt practices that remind us of Jesus and his testing in the wilderness. 

If you want to take this season of preparation seriously, there are plenty of opportunities and practices you can choose as your Lenten discipline this year. There are Lenten groups across the Holy Trinity Network running studies. You might like to try something new, like the Wednesday evening Praise and Worship at Robina, or one of the midweek services across the network. 

It may be something more personal — getting up fifteen minutes earlier each day to pray and read the Bible. Try looking up the Sunday readings during the week and praying through them; it might deepen your experience of the weekend sermons. Go for a prayer walk. Find a quiet space in your garden or a local park and sit with God. Make a donation to charity (the ABM Lenten appeal is now open: ABMission.org). Try a fast — chocolate as a last resort — and if you’re on medication, speak to your doctor first. 

If it helps, here are a few simple oneliners that capture the heart of Lent — little reminders you can carry with you through the season:  

A prayer you might like to pray daily during Lent: 

May you have a holy and blessed Lent. 

Blessings, Rev. Eron.