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Liturgy in Lent
Our church year is made up of several seasons, each with its own focus and feel. Through some intentional liturgical changes, we are able to enter into each season in a variety of ways through our senses, as each one looks, sounds, and feels different. Lent may well be the most dramatic of all.
We see differences as soon as we enter the church. The color is purple, a sober sign of our repentance, even as it is also a color of royalty – of Christ the King who will die for us on the cross. And the cross is covered in purple – drawing our attention to it and all its meaning very intentionally. There are no flowers on the altar making it a stark reminder of the sacrifice Christ made for us there.
We hear the difference, too, in the silence of the entrance of the choir and altar party. We go out in silence, too. This is the most solemn season of the year and this silence makes us keenly aware of that. I do invite you to practice your own silence intentionally when you enter church and save the greeting of friends for coffee hour. Instead, sit silently in prayer, as the season bids us. It will help you enter more deeply into Lent.
For The Great Thanksgiving we will use Eucharistic Prayer 1 from Enriching Our Worship. Notice how this prayer lifts up the themes of Lent as we prepare to receive the Body and Blood of Christ together. The confession comes from EOW, too, as does the post-communion prayer, again with language that wakes us to this particular season.
We feel the difference as we kneel (as we are able) for the confession, which comes at the very beginning of the service known as The Penitential Order. We begin by reciting the Ten Commandments before we confess to all the ways we have fallen short of God’s commands; all the ways we have separated ourselves, individually, as a community, and as the world, for the love of God for all of God’s creation.
Nothing we do in our liturgy is accidental or capricious. All of the ways the liturgy of Lent are meant to lift up the focus of this season, as well as Holy Week, and will help us to appreciate more fully our joyful Eastertide, when we get there. But first, we must enter, intentionally and solemnly, this most holy season. I pray for us all a blessed and meaningful Lent.
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