A Leader’s Prayer During Lent
Lectionary Readings for Fifth Sunday in Lent (April 6, 2025):
Isaiah 43:16-21, Psalm 126, Philippians 3:4b-14, John 12:1-8
Lent Calendar (Cycle C) and guidance for using the lectionary
“Lent is a time of returning to God. It is a time to confess how we keep looking for joy, peace, and satisfaction in the many people and things surrounding us without really finding what we desire. Only God can give us what we want. So we must be reconciled with God… The season of Lent helps us in a special way to cry out for God’s mercy.” –Henri Nouwen
There comes a time in the spiritual life when one of the major things God is up to is to lovingly help us see ourselves more clearly. This is a time when we are called to wake up to the darkness within and invite the light of God’s presence to shine there. Just as winter and spring—light and darkness—seem to be fighting for dominance during this season of the earth, Lent is a spiritual season for seeing, naming and confessing our own darkness until eventually it gives way to God’s marvelous light.
A Leader’s Prayer During Lent
It is not easy to consider “dying so that we might live,” but there are times when this is what God calls us to. When we embrace the rhythms of the Church year as seasons of transformation, hiddenness, self-examination, and fasting is what we are called to during Lent. Let’s pray for ourselves and one another that we will hear God’s call to us during this Lenten season. Perhaps this prayer from Henri Nouwen’s work, A Cry for Mercy, will help us.
“Yes, Lord, I have to die—with you, through you, and in you—and thus become ready to recognize you when you appear to me in your resurrection. There is so much in me that needs to die: false attachments, greed and anger, impatience and stinginess.
O Lord, I am self-centered, concerned about myself, my career, my future, my name and fame. Often I even feel that I use you to my own advantage…
Yes, Lord, I know it is true. I know that often I have spoken about you, written about you, and acted in your name for my own glory and success. Your name has not led me to persecution, oppression, or rejection. Your name has brought me rewards! I see clearly how little I have died with you, really gone your way and been faithful to it.
O Lord, make this Lenten season different from the other ones. Let me find you again. Amen.
© Ruth Haley Barton, 2025. Not to be reproduced without permission.
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