Lent Day 9 | 40 to Life

The below reflection was provided by the Diocese of Southern Virginia:

Friday in the First Week of Lent

Lord Christ, our eternal Redeemer, grant us such fellowship in your sufferings, that, filled with your Holy Spirit, we may subdue the flesh to the spirit, and the spirit to you, and at the last attain to the glory of your resurrection; who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
 
In Lent, I often return to a question once asked of me by my spiritual director, “What keeps me in fellowship - with God, with my faith community, and with myself?”
 
Exploring Jesus’ great physical, emotional, and spiritual pains on the cross is to explore the deepest love imaginable.
 
We might pray over the physical wounds and find a sobering fellowship with Jesus that finds our own wounds touched by God’s redeeming love.
 
We might explore Jesus’ emotional pain, “Mother here is your Son” and find within us the deep compassion that Jesus could give even in such suffering.
 
We might sit with the spiritual suffering Jesus experienced when the Word was so silenced that he was left with only these words, “My God, My God”. We all experience the dry desert of God’s silence. Through the words, “My God, My God” we might also know the glory of God’s voice as breathed life into the Word again.
 
God’s redeeming love as known in the suffering of Jesus means there is no physical, emotional, or spiritual place we might go that Jesus has not also been and is there.
 
God is with us. Dip your toe, or dive deep, into the waters of this “keeping” this Lent.

The Diocesan Lenten Reflections come from clergy and laity in each of our nine convocations. The reflections are based on the collect appointed for each day in Lent. Today's collect and the associated daily readings can be found HERE.