Last year, around this time, we wrote Shepherd’s Voice thinking that we were headed into our normal Lenten observances. COVID-19 changed all that.   Will there be a COVID 21?  Last year, the only response that I heard in the midst of COVID was quite simply, “I don’t know”.  Even as we are awaiting a vaccine that is supposed to be a great liberating help, I am moved to make this Lent, a Lent of deeper silence.  After we have discovered that we don’t know and may never know, the best response is a silence that brings you deeper into your heart and soul. 

This silence may not answer any questions.  Instead it calls you to patience with yourself and with our God.  Lent has always been a period of preparation.  Many people have seen Lent as a period to get things (grace) from God or as a period to recompense a God whom we have hurt.  Originally, Lent was that period which the Early Christians used to prepare for baptism, the glorious rites of Easter which every Christian attended. New Christians were baptized and other Christians renewed their baptismal promises.

God speaks to us, not when we demand it, but when we are open to His voice in whatever form He speaks – in His Word, in the silence of our hearts, in the voice  of another human, or in the breeze and the water.  Pray this Lent for the grace to listen and to hear and to obey,  

There will be much to listen to this Lent.

+ Clyde Martin Harvey

Bishop. 

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