This Lent, Bishop Lawrence has written two very helpful pastoral letters (so far) on Lenten disciplines.  Herewith are excerpts and links:

Self-Denial: A Delightful Refrain

“Self-denial…” wrote Cardinal John Henry Newman, “is a subject never out of place in Christian teaching.”    It is never out of place because it is a way of putting the cross, the pattern of Christ’s sacrifice, at the very center of our daily lives.  It is especially appropriate during the forty days of Lent.  “If anyone would come after me,” said Jesus, “let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  Let him deny himself--this is not just refraining from sin; nor practicing what earlier Christians called mortification, that action through the Holy Spirit of putting to death sin in the Christian’s life (Rom. 8:13; Col. 3:5): though certainly it includes this.   Rather it is walking in the way of sacrificial obedience to Christ’s call.  This includes at times giving up what one might rightly and legitimately use.  As St. Paul writes “‘All things are lawful’ but not all things are helpful.  All things are lawful but I will not be enslaved by anything.”  (I Cor. 6:12-14; see also I Cor.10:23)

The Ash Wednesday liturgy includes self-denial, along with self-examination, prayer and fasting, as one of the disciplines for the observance of a holy Lent.  Yet self-denial is rarely even mentioned these days within the Church.  Is it any wonder in this increasingly indulgent society that it is not at the top of most lists or dimensions in Christian discipleship?  To be sure this discipline, like the other spiritual disciplines can fall prey to a form of perfectionism which denies the grace and freedom we have in Christ;  yet, nevertheless, when employed from grace and through God’s grace there is godly freedom, even delight,  in these disciplines, especially the discipline of self-denial...  

Read it all.

Self-Examination: Spiritual Stocktaking

Dear Friends in Christ,

If you have never lived in snow country where the roads are salted because of snow and ice, you may not know how salt can corrode the fenders and undergirding of your car. I remember seeing, one morning as I drove to work, an oncoming car lose its rear wheels and chassis. The trunk of the car hit the asphalt with sparks and scraping, while the rear axle and wheels went rolling off the road and into a vacant field. Since no one was hurt, I couldn’t help snickering to myself at the jocular scene, when I was suddenly arrested by the sobering thought: “Mark, when was the last time you examined the frame of your car?”  Most of us, before we go on a cross-country trip, will check the oil, tires, brakes, and fill the gas tank. Yet surprisingly enough, many of us on the great journey of the Christian life, traveling over rough roads, in bad weather, icy passes and lonely barren deserts, demonstrate an all too lackadaisical attitude to the equipment of our spiritual lives.

Lent is a good season to do what Evelyn Underhill calls spiritual stocktaking. In the disciplines of the Christian life this is called “Self-Examination.” It is the first discipline mentioned in the Ash Wednesday invitation to a Holy Lent. The Prayer Book reads:  “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s Holy Word.” (BCP, p. 265)

Although Self-Examination, or “the examination of conscience” as it used to be called, is a long honored discipline of the Christian life, too often the average Christian not only doesn’t know how to do it, he doesn’t even know what it is. This of course is not his fault; it is the fault of us who are pastors and teachers in the Church. Ironically, 12 Step groups like A.A. and N.A. make important use of this discipline. The Fourth Step of A.A. reads:  “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” The Fifth Step follows up:  “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” Sixth Step: “ Were entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character.”

Read it all.