The Falling of Dusk: The 2023 Lent Book

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This is a beautiful and compelling exploration of the dark, suffering side of the Passion – and how Jesus’ words lead us to the greatest hope of all. Failosophy” is a name given to some recent interest in thinking failure through. This year, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book by Emma Ineson, Failure: What Jesus said about sin, mistakes and messing stuff up, contributes to the conversation by moving “towards an (imperfect) theology of failure”. Having written a book a few years ago on ambition, Ineson now, in post-Covid days, asks what failure is, as human beings and as a Church. She explores what Jesus said about failure, how he trained his disciples for it, how he spent time with failures, and how all this might translate into our own lives and communities today. Dust and Glory: A Lent Journey of faith, failure and forgiveness offers a daily Bible reading, a short reflection and a practical challenge, as well as a prayer linked to the week’s theme. Co-written by Bishop Emma Ineson and Abbie Martin, the booklet is designed to be used either in parallel with the Lent Book or independently. Like the poet R. S. Thomas, who scratched his soul on the glass that had been handed to him, Cottrell is able to hold together our chaotic worldly life and our more attuned selves that know what it is to be ambushed by epiphany and hope. Though often breathless as a speaker, his is a patient priesthood as he attends to where we are in our inner lives and where we might yet be with God. As Jesus hung on the cross, jeered at and, yes, humiliated, love was winning, as it always does, because it is the nature of the one who is our source.

Elaine Storkey’s Meeting God in Matthew is a very welcome addition to this Lent’s library. With a self-effacing scholarship that wants to share its discoveries to deepen faith rather than win admiration, Storkey introduces us to St Matthew and his Gospel in some fresh and insightful ways. With questions also set for discussion, this is a book to help the parish or chaplaincy congregation, or house group, to immerse themselves in a Gospel’s entirety, a Gospel that begins by telling us that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, and ends with his telling his disciples that he is with them always, to the very end of the age. The foundational call of Christians to charity is a frequent theme of the Gospels. During Lent, we are asked to focus more intently on "almsgiving," which means donating money or goods to the poor and performing other acts of charity. As one of the three pillars of Lenten practice, almsgiving is "a witness to fraternal charity" and "a work of justice pleasing to God." ( Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2462). Opportunities for Almsgiving during Lent Each chapter includes questions for discussion and reflection, making Meeting God in Matthew a perfect book for Bible study, both for individuals and small groups. With a focus on the Passion narrative, it is also ideal for use as a Lent devotional. Lent is such an annunciation, bearing the message that anyone who is intimate with God will be known by their humility, not for their humiliation. Lent encourages us to seek practical and prayerful ways to deepen this vital intimacy. Happily, Lent books this year, in their varying ways, hold a compass for us, as we explore the atlas of the heart with the desire to turn from something coldly acidic to a human and humane being, created with dignity and formed in the likeness of Christ.

Lent books traditionally focus on repentance, fasting, and prayer. The devotions in Images of Grace run every day from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. Each week explores a different Biblical image beginning with sin and repentance. Then moves on to forgiveness, atonement, restoration, and finally in Holy Week reconciliation. Meeting God in Matthew explores what the Gospel of Matthew teaches us about the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the gospel message better, it will leave you with a new appreciation of and enthusiasm for the riches of Matthew's writing, and the desire to return to it over and over again. Its straightforward, enlightening approach also makes it eminently helpful for new Christians just starting out on their faith journey. There are eight weekly projects to cover the period of Lent. Each week uses the Scripture readings taken from the Book of Common Prayer (Year A). The project involves selecting one of the readings for artwork and then journaling your responses to a set of questions. There are further questions for discussion if you are completing the task as part of a small group. As well as offering her reflections on the various film excerpts, the Bible passages and the themes they explore, Bishop Rose also draws on her own experiences from a childhood growing up in Jamaica without a mother from the age of 2, and from her years of ministry. ‘It is my hope’, writes Bishop Rose, ‘that we will find ourselves at the end of the course more literate and fluent when it comes to expressing our faith, and comfortable and willing, not only to recognise, but to speak about the difference faith is making in our daily living.’ In 2019, Emma Ineson wrote about ambition and what it means for Christians to be successful. And then there was a global pandemic . . . Suddenly failure began to feel very much more familiar than success.

In the Gospel of Mark’s account of the Passion narrative, Jesus calls out from the cross ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?‘ which is the Aramaic for ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ – the first line of Psalm 22. It’s an anguished expression – traditionally ascribed to King David – of defeat, failure, abandonment and despair. Her last chapter, “How to fail really well”, is a helpful and practical encouragement to accept that failure is natural, but fear of failure doesn’t have to be. Some may find reflections on failure all a bit middle-class. Failure is not so frightening when you have the mental, financial, or time resources to learn resilience and creativity from it. Without those resources, failure can be overbearing and paralysing, feeling utterly irredeemable. What faith communities offer people in this situation is a pretty pressing question. Dust and Glory is the Church of England's Lent campaign for 2023. Offering 40 daily reflections for Lent on faith, failure and forgiveness, it invites you to find God in the mess of everyday life.For members of the Latin Catholic Church within the United States, please see the USCCB's Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence and the complementary norm to canon 1253 and the Code of Canon Law (cc. 1249-1253)