From the School Chaplain

The Reverend Sarah Stapleton

Lent I am so excited that we are finally in Lent! Lent is my favourite season of the Church. On Tuesday we celebrated the nearness of Lent with pancakes for Shrove Tuesday – the big eat-up before the lean time of Lent.

In Lent we are gifted a chance to go inside ourselves and see what is happening in the interior, in the quietness (or clamouring) of our minds and hearts. We are following the journey of Jesus, into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights.

The wilderness is comfortless, which is why we are encouraged to give up something that makes us comfortable. In the discomfort of missing our chocolate, sugar, meat or coffee (insert your favourite indulgence here) we are prompted to examine our relationship with our habits, good or bad. In our struggle with temptation, we are encouraged to rely on something other than the quick-fix that calls us from the kitchen.

This small struggle with consumables might seem paltry when compared to Jesus’ time in the wilderness surrounded by wild animals and a life-threatening lack of food and water, but this Lenten sacrifice is about the interior, rather than the exterior. In Lent, we are encouraged to go inside, to check-in with ourselves. In that battle with temptation over chocolate or whatever, we face our own weaknesses, and regardless of whether we fail or prevail, we come away with a new understanding of our own being. Lent is the time when we recognise in the smallness of our sacrifice, the smallness of ourselves.

Lent is the time that we anticipate in our smallness, the enormity and generosity of God’s gift to us in his Son.

In the Easter act of death and resurrection, all of our smallnesses are gathered together and transformed into something powerful enough to change the world.

Blessings

The Reverend Sarah Stapleton School Chaplain