Dear Saints,

Writing to you at the beginning of Lent is one of my favorite traditions. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to connect with you as we set out on our 40-day trek!

Our Lenten undertakings remain very much evergreen and intact. We commit ourselves to works of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in order to grow in love of God, self, and neighbor. The simple disciplines of Lent generate serious power for transformation. No big changes here.

Every Lent takes its own shape and has its own character. To that end, I’d like to offer you a couple of thoughts that have surfaced in prayer recently. They’ll serve as my Lenten theme this year, and a possible starting point for intentional engagement with the season: smallness and sincerity.

The first point is that, against our cultural inclination, Lent isn’t about going big or going home. More often than not, the really big stuff of heart and life change happens in small and even unseen acts. My challenge to you, then, is to go small with your penitential practices. (If you haven’t yet established the baseline I outline below, take another baby step this year.)

The second point enlivens the first. Sincerity, the quality of being free from pretense, deceit, or hypocrisy, makes our small acts great. We know that we have been called to lives of great and costly love -- what God is getting across to me these days is that love demands sincerity.

By starting off sincerely and small, we will gain traction in the way of love. And if we grow in love throughout Lent and over the course of our lives, we’ll find that nothing at all can derail us from going God’s way.

God bless you, my friends. If you need anything at all, please be in touch.

In the Peace of Christ,
Father Daniel

δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ

PS Our beyond-the-tithe challenge for this Lent is Several Sources, a well-known local charity that saves babies’ lives and shelters their young mothers. Our goal is to raise at least $20,000 for this great work.