Lent 2026

The Season of Lent is the Church’s call to return. Marked with ashes and sustained by repentance, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, these forty days lead us through the wilderness and toward the cross. Lent is not a spiritual performance, but a stripping away so that we may follow Christ more nearly, love him more dearly, and walk with him more faithfully.

In Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary, we journey primarily through Matthew’s Gospel, alongside the Church’s ancient catechetical texts from John. We are led into the wilderness with Jesus, where temptation tests and clarifies our trust. We ascend the mountain to hear the deeper righteousness of the kingdom. We listen to parables that expose hardened hearts and summon true repentance. And as Holy Week unfolds, we enter Jerusalem with palms in our hands, kneel at the table where Christ gives himself in bread and wine, and stand beneath the cross where love is poured out to the end.

Lent moves us from self-examination to surrender. As the journey deepens, we discover that the way of the cross is not a detour from glory but its very shape. Through dust and desert, through table and tree, Christ draws us into the mystery of his dying and rising so that, having walked the road with him, we may be ready to receive the dawn of Easter with hearts made new.