On Sunday, we began all three services with the Great Litany. The majestic cadences and beautiful language of the Litany transported us back 450 years to the very beginning of the English Reformation. It was the first portion of the liturgy that Archbishop Cranmer translated into English in the 1540s. The version we used is considerably modernized, yet it retains the penitential feel of the original. As I led the congregation in the Litany at the first two services, I reflected on the power of its words to shape my understanding of my self as a sinner. Later, the cantor who sang at the third service, remarked to me, “It doesn’t let us off the hook.” What he meant was that in the series of petitions, we give voice to all of our sins, and we also give voice to all of the ways in which we need to repent, and in which we need to receive God’s forgiveness.

One of the first things that attracted me to the Episcopal liturgy was the simplicity and beauty of the confession: “we have sinned against you, in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.” That pretty much covers it. But it doesn’t end there. The priest’s absolution reminds us that God forgives us for all of our sins. Still, even though we say the words of that confession every Sunday, it is good to be reminded occasionally, as in the Great Litany, that our sins go deeper than the words of the confession.

Lent provides us an opportunity to take our religious lives more seriously than we are wont to do. We often symbolize that by giving something up, something dear to us. In my case, I have given up bourbon, and I have again, as I often have in the past, vowed to give up meat on Fridays. But spiritual discipline does not only mean giving something up. It can also mean taking something on, trying something that one might not otherwise do, like the daily office, or a regular regimen of prayer, reading, or even works of mercy.  In Lent, we can try something on, see how it fits; sometimes, we might discover that the practice we take on quickly becomes a habit, part of us.

One of my struggles as a priest is finding space to worship in the midst of distributing ashes, leading the congregation in the Great Litany, or celebrating Eucharist. Often worship takes place in small, unguarded moments, when I catch the eye of a parishioner as I am making the sign of the cross with ashes on their forehead, or as I place the Host in their hands. Occasionally, though, as I am saying the words, the prayer I am saying for the congregation beomes my prayer: “In all times of sorrow, in all times of joy, in the hour of our death and at the day of judgment, Savior deliver us.”

The Great Litany reminds us of our brokenness, as individuals, as families and congregations, as a church, a nation, and a worldwide community of life. To acknowledge that brokenness and our own responsibility for it is one of the great lessons of Lent. As I was leading the Litany on Sunday, I realized again how much of our church’s and our world’s problems are created by people who recognize the sin in others, but seem unable to acknowledge or admit the sin in their own. My prayer for this Lent is that I pray with utter sincerity: “Grant me true repentance, forgive us our sins of negligence, and ignorance and our deliberate sins, and grant us the gracec of your Holy Spirit to amend our lives according to your word.” Amen.

Fr. Jonathan