Use some or all of this reflection to help guide your personal journey through this week of Lent.

Reflect

We begin in earnest the week with Jesus, and his final Easter journey. It takes courage and also a certain steadfastness to hear again the age-old stories, stories that are familiar, yet… perhaps arrive in our lives now to bring us something new, something deeper… something calling us?

True love demands sacrifice, because true love is a transforming force and really is the birth pangs of union on a higher plane.

The recapitulation of the Lord’s prayer (private publication, British mystic, unknown)

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Excerpt from The Summer Day, Mary Oliver   New and Selected Poems

Read

²⁸After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

²⁹When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, ³⁰saying, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. ³¹If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ³²So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. ³³As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, ‘Why are you untying the colt?’ ³⁴They said, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ³⁵Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. ³⁶As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. ³⁷Now as he was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joy fully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, ³⁸saying,

‘Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!

³⁹Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ ⁴⁰He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’

Luke 19:28-40 (NRSVUE)

Ponder

• Jesus knows what is coming in this time.
  • Despite this, he chooses to continue toward Jerusalem
• What must the Son of God, the man, Jesus have been feeling?
• Can you sit with what your thoughts and feelings are but also take a moment to suspend your images and place your self in Jesus shoes.
  • In what ways does love pull you forward even in difficult or disheartening or troubling situations?
• Could you have gone on to Jerusalem?

Do

• Is there someone you can offer to join in some way as they walk toward their Jerusalem?
  
  If not now, perhaps in the future?

• This is the week leading up to Eater. It is called Holy week.
  There is a Hebrew word for Holy  -qadash; it means to be set apart.

Can you set apart a piece of each day this week -no matter what you’ve done until now or might do after Easter…for these next days, set aside a time to simply be where Jesus is, to be in his experiences, to ponder his feelings, his thoughts, his choices….To Love Him.

Prayer

Jesus, help me to truly be with you in this week.

Listen

Here are some songs that you may like to listen to as you reflect on the week.

In the Night Andrew Peterson. The first version is a live recording in  valley of stones, the second has the lyrics on screen and some animation.

For a printable PDF of the text of this reflection please click on the link below.

Use some or all of this reflection to help guide your personal journey through this week of Lent.

Reflect

‘Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love’

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa, 1910-1997 and Brian Kolodiejchuk. 2007. Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light : The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta”. New York, Doubleday.

Read

¹“Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ²There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him. ³Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. ⁴But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ ⁶(He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) ⁷Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. ⁸You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’”

John 12:1-8 (NRSVUE)

Ponder

We are moving closer to Easter.

• This is a story charged with emotion, full of physicality , hard words and individual agendas…where would you have been in this story? Can you imagine watching Jesus while this was unfolding?
  • How do you think Jesus might have been at this point in the journey?
  • How are you?
• What did the service of Martha and Mary have in common, and how do they differ?
  • Do you have times you are like Martha? Like Mary? Can you notice when and why?

• Things got in the way for Judas. He didn’t want to accept the love so boldly on display as the ultimate act…
  • Was Judas ‘being a thief’ the only reason he got angry?

Do

• Are there any ways (one or more) that you can offer acts of love this week?
  • Perhaps notice when it feels more like Martha’s love and when it feels like Mary’s love.
  • Is there a difference for you when you offer those acts?

Prayer

This week can you hold this prayer as your own. Perhaps this week, the best we can do is to ask for the courage to be able to pray such a prayer.

Jesus, show me the way to truly follow you on this path towards Life…whether it asks that I toil like Martha, or adore like Mary.

Give me the same courage you are finding, to be truly myself, to be truly loving, to be truly yours. Amen

Listen

Here’s a lovely meditation in song, Little Things With Great Love by Madison Cunningham

For a printable PDF of the text of this reflection please click on the link below.

Use some or all of this reflection to help guide your personal journey through this week of Lent.

Reflect

Something about the reading from Luke this week is so familiar to so many people it is easy to dismiss it. Yet, it holds so much for us to reflect upon, to wonder at, to bring who we are to it, and then, let go and accept the gracious loving invitation from God.

Grace is not something God gives; grace is who God is. Grace is God’s official job description. Grace is what God does to keep alive—forever—all things that God has created in love. If we are to believe the primary witnesses—the prophets, the mystics, the saints, the transformed people—an unexplainable goodness is at work in the universe. (Some of us call this phenomenon God, but that word isn’t necessary. In fact, sometimes it gets in the way of the experience, because too many have named God something other than Grace).  

There’s no way that the Scriptures, rightly understood, present God as an eternal torturer. Yet many Christians seem to believe this, and many are held back from trusting God’s goodness because of this “angry parent in the sky” that we have created. The determined direction of the Scriptures, fully revealed in Jesus, is that God’s justice is not achieved by punishment, but by the divine initiative we call grace, which enables us to bring about internal rightness, harmony, balance, and realignment with what is.  

Richard Rohr Daily Meditations Sun March 9, 2025 From Centre for Action and Contemplation

Read

¹¹Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. ¹²The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. ¹³A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living. ¹⁴When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵ So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. ¹⁶He would gladly have filled his stomachwith the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. ¹⁷But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! ¹⁸I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’

²⁰So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. ²¹Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ ²²But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, ²⁴for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.  Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶ He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. ²⁷He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ ²⁸Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him.

²⁹But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. ³⁰But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ ³¹Then the fathersaid to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³²But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’ ”

NRSVUE Luke 15: 11-32

Ponder

If you’ve heard this parable once or a thousand times, it has the power to change you.

• Who are you in this parable today? The father, the prodigal child, the hardworking child, an observer, a commentator…
  • Why?
  • Can you sit with the images and let yourself truly be in this story?
• Does something change when you realize who you’ve been playing?
• Can you imagine what other roles there are and what it would be like to be each of them?

Do

• If it’s possible can you get together with a few others and read this story aloud with different people taking the different roles?
  
  If not, perhaps even read it aloud to yourself, be a bit brave or have some fun and read each part in a different way.
  
  
• Watch out for the ways God might be wanting to reach out to you this week -like the father did with both sons. Can you respond to Gods open grace?

Prayer

So many things hold us back from your love -our mistakes, our shame, even our self-righteousness.

Help us to accept what is true and the way things truly are – to live that way – and so continue to walk with Jesus towards our own Easter story in a way that reflects that which is most true in our lives -your Grace. Amen

Listen

You may like listening to some of this music. The first piece is a song based on Hosea’s words, ‘Come back to me with all your heart‘, a setting by Gregory Norbert of the Monks of Western Priory.

As you listen to this last piece, could you imagine yourself, invited into a celebration with the whole house of heaven, with Jesus welcoming you, God embracing you and the Holy Spirit filling you. This celebration is for you. Let the music fill you with joy; you are home.

For a printable PDF of the text of this reflection please click on the link below.

Use some or all of this reflection to help guide your personal journey through this week of Lent.

Reflect

‘There have always been those who speak of God as Wholly Other, inconceivable and remote, utterly unlike our abortive attempts to picture him in our own image. Others have come to see God as the Reality present in all things, the true ground of our being. Here is the paradox of God transcendent and God immanent, God beyond and God within, two approaches which speak both of my undeniable sense of awe and longing, my knowing and unknowing, yet an encounter deep within myself.’

Michael Mayne: Learning to Dance   ( Dartman Longman Todd 2001)

Image – Stained glass window, chapel of the Holy Spirit, St James Church, Sydney

‘Why do we go to church Fynn?’
‘To understand Mister God more.’
‘Less’
‘Less what?’
‘To understand Mister God less.’
‘Wait a minute. You’re flipped!’

‘No, I’m not…You go to church to make Mister God really really big. When you make Mister God really really big, then you really really don’t understand Mister God, – then you do… Mister God keeps shedding bits all the way through your life until the time comes when you admit freely and honestly that you don’t understand Mister God at all. At this point you have let Mister God be the proper size and Wham there he is laughing at you.’

Anna speaking to Fynn from Fynn: Mister God This is Anna (Collins Fountain Paper Backs 1974)

Read

⁶ Seek the Lord while he may be found,
    call upon him while he is near;
⁷ let the wicked forsake their way,
    and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
⁸ For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

¹⁰ For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
    and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
¹¹ so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

¹² For you shall go out in joy,
    and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
    shall burst into song,
    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Isaiah 55:6-12 (NRSVUE)

Ponder

What is this passage saying to you right now?

Some commentators talk about this passage as describing prayer – where the rain is like prayer which falls on us making us fertile and bringing us back to life
Has prayer ever felt like that for you?


What do you feel about ‘seeking’ and ‘returning to the Lord’?
What would that mean for you if you took that call seriously today?


How do you live with the paradox of knowing God…but not?

Do

Is there one thing this week you could approach, renewed by this passage

• A way of ‘returning to God’ might invite you to act or think or be in a different way to what you usually act or think or are.
• If the image of prayer being rain has caught you, what kind of rain speaks to you as prayer – a gentle mist, a downpour, a thunderstorm?
• Could you spend time this week simply sitting with this image of God whose thoughts are not your thoughts and ways are not your ways….and just notice what comes?

Prayer

Day by day Lord three things I pray:

To see you with full vision, but knowing I will not see or understand all.

To love you with more of myself – my heart, mind body and soul, but knowing I am often unsure; thinking I know but really I don’t.

and

To follow you more nearly, but knowing that I will stumble, and be diverted, busy or weary along the road.

These things I pray in trust and with hope because I am walking this road with Jesus.  Amen

Listen

Here’s something a bit different to listen to – e e cummings reads his own poem, I thank You God for most this amazing day.

Here’s the same poem in a choral arrangement by Dan Forrest.

For a printable PDF of the text of this reflection please click on the link below.

Use some or all of this reflection to help guide your personal journey through this week of Lent.

Reflect

Now we are moving into the thick of Lent. Of course we have questions, issues, excuses even. But then there is the simple call – ‘return to me’. This is the journey Jesus is making. Can we make it with him?

From Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Emily: Do human beings ever realise life while they live it? Every, every minute?

The Stage Manager: No. The saints and poets, maybe -they do some.

Read

Ponder

What verse jumps out at you?

What about the psalm speaks to you as you are making this journey through this time in our world?

Has there been a moment or period when you’ve felt like Emily? How would her entreaty to ‘realise life’ be connected to this psalm?

Do

Is there something physical you can do this week to make this psalm come alive for you? Use theses ideas or come up with something that speaks to you

• Light a candle and read the psalm each morning.
• Walk as you read it (hint read a verse, then walk a few paces, stop, read the next verse etc.)
• Go outside one night and do a little dance after reading the psalm aloud.
• Write out the verse or excerpt that would be most of benefit for you to be reminded of in times of difficulty and then fold it up and pop it somewhere where you can grab it if you need (a wallet, or in your phone in ‘notes’, or??)
  
  For me it’s the last verse – wait for the Lord, be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

Prayer

Waiting is hard, Jesus; it feels like I’m doing nothing. I have so many things to do, and waiting seems wasteful of my time. But you waited. You went into the wilderness to pray. You left people to be with yourself and God; to find courage for this walk you are making towards Easter.  

Teach me that way of being too. Amen

Listen

Here are two songs based on Psalm 27 you may like to listen to.

For a printable PDF of the text of this reflection please click on the link below.

Use some or all of this reflection to help guide your personal journey through this week of Lent.

Reflect

We do not have to be out in a desert to be in the wilderness. There are so many experiences that speak to us of this word. And it can be everything from a daily slog, to terrifying weather events, or despairing world news. How does God ‘fit’ into our experiences of wilderness. Does it help to know Jesus lived those experiences in his own wilderness.

James Findlay suggests:
‘God is the presence that spares us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things.’ 

James Findlay, “The mystical Foundations of Nonviolence,” Oneing 10 no 2, Nonviolence (Fall22) , Centre for Action and Contemplation

Read

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tested by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.

The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’

Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.”’

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’

Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”’

Then the devil led him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,” and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”’

Jesus answered him, ‘It is said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’

When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time. Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region.”

Luke 4:1-14 (NRSVUE)

Ponder

What are (or have been) some wilderness experiences for you?

How did or do you handle the wilderness?

Where are you tempted to control or find comfort that is perhaps not life giving?
(think about binge TV watching, phone scrolling, using food or other physical comforts, working longer hours, becoming angry or defensive…the options for avoidance are endless and vary on a given  day and between individual humans!)

Have you ever been in a wilderness experience and found a different way of facing it that has given you strength, courage, love – or spirit?

Do

This week as you continue on the journey with Jesus, can you notice your own wilderness experiences, and perhaps ponder where God’s sustaining might come from.

Also can you watch out for someone who is going through a wilderness experience and offer them support -reminding them of sustaining love (a phone call, or visit, a hug, a coffee, a card or even a prayer said alone in your room)?

Pray

Jesus, you went into the wilderness and faced so much that is our own experience in life. As we walk this journey with you can you help us to see the sustaining certain love of the one who held you through that time, give us the courage and love to respond as you would.

We too want to walk in the power of the Spirit.  Amen

Listen

Here are two songs you might like to listen to.

This old hymn sung by Morgantown Methodist in lovely harmony focuses on Jesus’ time in the desert

Sung by Prairie House Hymns, this Lenten hymn comes from a prayer of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, a prominent hymnographer of Eastern Christianity from the 4th century

For a printable PDF of the text of this reflection please click on the link below.

Welcome back to the St Mary Magdalene’s blog.

For Lent 2025 Alison and Leonie have compiled a weekly reflection to use in whatever way may assist in the Journey towards Easter.

We have used a number of sources:

• A Lent Study by Kate Bowler, The Hardest Part.
  
• The Anglican Board of Mission project Into the Desert
  
• Art and Theology Blog by Victoria Emily Jones

The reflections will be published for Ash Wednesday and each Sunday in Lent. We hope they will provide you with some options for reading, pondering, and doing that can add to your journey through the weeks of Lent, especially knowing others are reading, pondering and doing similar things! It may be you find one thing in each section helpful and choose to use that for the week, or one thing in the early sections that is enough for the whole season or explore one of the resources above.

Whatever comes we hope you find this time rich in mercy and love as well as challenge, thoughtfulness and spiritual richness.

Blessings Alison and Leonie

Reflect

Lent begins with human touch as oil and ashes are traced in the shape of a cross on our foreheads. From dust we were made; to dust we will return (Genesis 3:19). The intimacy of this symbolic act expresses God’s invitation to ‘be reconciled’ right here, right now, in this moment, no matter how ready we feel—for ‘now is the acceptable time’ (2 Corinthians 6:2b).

Jesus has flung open the door and said, let nothing stand in your way. Come and see how loved and how precious you really are, in all of your humanity. Jesus will speak strength and love into all the places where you feel fragile and inadequate. He will speak hope into your fears and eternal life into your very mortality. For know this: you were never meant to do this alone. 

These words from Kate Bowler are a beautiful reminder to see Lent itself as an invitation to something hopeful, something loving and something shared. Whatever you conceive God to be, however you’ve understood (or not) the story of Jesus, there is an invitation to being open to something bigger than our own world and its worries and joys. But there is also a very human and intimate aspect to Lent.

Even if you don’t participate in a service on Ash Weds perhaps you can sit quietly with some oil and ash and say the words

‘From dust you came and to dust you will return’

as you trace the sign of the cross on your forehead or hand with a mixture of oil and ash.

Read

So, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As we work together with him, we entreat you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,

‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’

Look, now is the acceptable time; look, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: in great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, Labors, sleepless nights, hunger; in purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honour and dishonour, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors and yet are true, as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and look—we are alive, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.

2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 (NRSVUE)

Ponder

How do you ‘Begin Lent’

What are you hoping for?

What are you expecting of yourself? Of God?

How might the call to be reconciled with God, or as Joel says “return to me with all your heart” be a call for you as you make your way through Lent?

Do

When we take our thoughts and spiritual ponderings into a physical act or an action it can help open space in us for a deepening of those things.

Can you commit in some way to marking the season of Lent with an action?

Ideas:

• Abstain/ fast from something through Lent as a reminder of your journey with Jesus at this time. This could be a particular food, an activity, a single day a week where you miss a meal altogether.
• Set an intention by noticing something that gets between you and your life with God, then use Lent as a time to simply observe that ‘something”, be curious about when it occurs, how it occurs, how it makes you feel. Rather than abstaining from it (sometimes this can be more that you are resisting it than letting it go which can turn this time into a battle rather than a deep submission to Grace) allow yourself to carry on as normal but be observant. This type of Lenten practice can invite your heart, mind and soul into a different awareness that then leads to change.
• Commit to something different in your daily routine -a walk in nature, a swim, an extended time of prayer and reflection, a visit to an old friend once a week…singing a song each day on rising…the options are endless and need to fit your life but also offer a challenge to step out of your usual ways of returning to God.

Prayer

Jesus, as you are preparing to begin the journey to the cross, we turn our eyes and hearts, our minds and spirits towards you. We know so deeply that we have come from dust and will return to dust. Please be our guide through this time. Amen

For a printable PDF of the text of this reflection please click on the link below.