Lenten Pastoral Letter 2025

Lent is a time for renewal, a springtime for the mind and soul. We are pointed by the Church’s long practice laid out by Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount: prayer and fasting and almsgiving. The real work of digging up the soil of our hearts is really the same work for the Church collectively. Parish renewal is an outgrowth of personal renewal. Parishes grow by the activity of God’s grace in the lives of His people. Parish health is the organic result of a powerful, fertile atmosphere for the adoration of God and celebration of His life. All of the gifts by which Our Lord gives Himself to us and makes us more fully His Own are transformative. They shift and re-create our identity so we see ourselves less and less apart from Jesus. All things are His. We are His. He is ours. The ways this manifests in the life of each of us, and then in our local manifestations of the Church catholic around the local altar, are multifaceted. But they all come back to the Gospel: the official, royal, authoritative proclamation of Jesus. A major risk that we run is to replace this proclamation and its effects on our lives with a superficial substitute. One way this has happened is that we can easily and unintentionally substitute statements ABOUT the Gospel,
for the actual proclamation OF the Gospel. Talking about Jesus and proclaiming the actual Gospel of Jesus are utterly different in their nature and their effects. The former uses all kinds of really good words. It says that the Gospel of Jesus is important. It claims that the Gospel is at the center of our lives. It may do so in very sophisticated, elaborate, long-handed ways or very simple ones. Preaching the Gospel itself means giving the details of Jesus’ Person and work as the official, authoritative declaration which changes us. Proclaiming the Gospel means moving from abstract intellectual categories to the living Word, spoken to real people to change them. It is not presenting mere intellectual niceties for civilized
people but speaking with certainty the living Words of God which transmit the Life of God. This proclamation in its very essence gives renewal to the heart, mind, soul, and body of those who hear it in faith, after making stony, unreceptive hearts able to hear. So as rich and deeply complex as the Gospel is, with all kinds of essential distinctions and definitions, it is not
merely abstract. It is God’s active power to deliver. 1 It is the speaking of Jesus Himself into those who hear. This speaking alone has the power to renew the Church. This happen through catechesis, and our adoration, deep study and prayer of the Scriptures as the living Word by which we encounter Jesus Himself. By these means and

1 See Matthew 12:24, where “the Scriptures” and “the power of God” are set next to one another as one reality, in a kind of hendiadys
construction (2 Cor. 6:7; Rom. 1:16; Ephesians 6:17; Hebrews 4:12; etc.).

the nurture given in the Eucharist and other sacraments, God will refresh and regrow God’s covenant people as a vibrant, living community which presents clearly Jesus to the world.
Jesus, infinite and perfect, eternal, upholding of all things in existence at every moment has, with His Own real human body and soul, entered into your life. He has taken upon Himself every one of your particular sins and your specific death. He has endured all the weight of your sins- those that we know and rightly confess are “grievous” and an “intolerable” burden to our minds and souls. Jesus, the LORD, has taken on Himself all these experiences and wounds, which manifests themselves in our minds, our bodies, the innermost corner of our souls. Jesus, the Lamb of God, carries away your sins. He has taken the suffering of these completely, even to the point of already sharing your own death with you. When we reach that moment of death, we will find Him already there with us. He is also triumphant, living forever to bring release and change, with newness of life flowing from Him into you. All of this, and much more, is the proclamation of new life into our hearts and minds. It is the water that alone can quench the thirsty needs of our hearts. It is the wine which makes us alive with the sober intoxication of God’s love for us. This is a path set out to embrace us in the wondrous Life of God, to fill each of us with His fulness (Eph. 3:19; 2 Peter 1:4). This trajectory, lived out in the movement of Lent into Passiontide and then Easter, is about to move into high gear once again. This Lent, resolve by God’s Own grace and power to enter more fully into participation in what Jesus has done and wants to apply to you. If you haven’t said the Daily Office, start. If this seems overwhelming, begin with something smaller. Perhaps begin each day with the Venite on page 9 of the Prayer Book, the Our Father, and the collects on page 17. Or close every day with the Magnificat on page 26 and the collects on page 31. Attend the Stations of the Cross and ask God to open up their meaning and application to you. Meditate on the Passion Gospels or the readings in the daily lectionary. Find some reading that will move you more deeply into the open side of the Savior. At the cathedral, we will be using One with Jesus, an inexpensive little book by Paul De Jaegher, subtitled “The Life of Identification with Christ.” Take some specific step to renew life with Jesus at a higher level. Whatever you have been used to doing, recommit to asking God to reveal Himself and His purposes to you more deeply. Ask for greater discernment, and for an increase of devotion to Jesus and His Church. Ask Jesus to change you and be certain that this is His good and gracious will. Keep on asking and you will be given; keep seeking Him and you will find Him- and with Him all things in their proper perspective (Matt. 7:7; 6:33). Fixing our eyes on Jesus (Heb 12), we will be at the center of Christ’s renewal of His Church. A new Springtime for us is waiting in Him. All glory and praise and honour to His Name, in His Church, and out into the world!

The Right Rev. Patrick S. Fodor, Bishop Ordinary/Episcopal Visitor