Holy Cross 
Our Book of Common Prayer
Sets out five goals for us to examine during Lent
- Self Examination: When Jesus looked into the hearts of those he met, he both saw them more truthfully than they were able to see themselves and judged them more compassionately than they were willing to judge themselves. In Lent we are to examine ourselves anew through the painfully honest and totally loving eyes of Christ.
- Repentance: Lent invites us into the traditional fourfold pattern of repentance (turning away from whatever keeps us from God and our neighbor) and forgiveness or reconciliation (the renewal of right relationships with each):
Contrition—The change of behavior and desire for forgiveness that begins the process of repentance
Confession – The honest naming of that which separates us from God and one another
Absolution—The acceptance of God’s forgiveness and the healing of our brokenness by the Holy Spirit
Penance—Our concrete sign of gesture of reconciliation aimed towards those we have harmed
- Prayer: In the increasing austerity of common prayer and in the simplicity of private devotions, based on the Daily Office, we bring humanity’s failures and hopes, its fears and dreams, needs and gifts into God’s healing presence.
- Fasting & self denial: We remove, symbolically, some of the things from our lives that we desire, so that their place may be filled with what God desires for us as Gods children.
- Reading & meditating on God’s holy Word: We return to those creative and transformation stories by which God’s Son, the Word, comes to us anew through Scripture.
With God’s love and blessings, inviting you and the Holy Cross community to the observance to a Holy Lent, NLJ+