Although the word “Lent” is often associated with penitence, fasting and abstinence, the word is actually derived from the old German word for springtime, a time of an explosion of life and light. And what event is more emblematic of light and love than Jesu’s Resurrection, the very culmination of Lent?
Lent is not a new event for Trinity College. In the past Christians have conducted many Lent services, the 1949 Chaplain’s report states that there were Lenten services where the staff and students participated at 9.00 every Wednesday night in the ‘Chapel of the Light of The World’ (the Side Chapel). Holy Communion services were celebrated on every Wednesday and Friday at 7.00 in the morning.
On one instance the chaplain stated the importance of Christian worship at Trinity like this:
“It is difficult in an ‘open Church’ for young minds to be conscious of the presence of the Most High. So many external things distract them and make that concentration of the must attain, but we must attain it! That is the challenge of our chapel and we must accept that challenge and win through to that oblation of self which is Christian worship.”
As we head into the “spring” this year, we look back from the supreme miracle of Jesus’s love, to the many small miracles of that occur in our everyday life. It is often our failing as Christians that we take the stories of miracles for granted without truly diving into them.
What, for example, is the lesson that we learn from the feeding of the five thousand? When Jesus cursed the fig tree, was this an exhortation to kill all plant life? Or was there a deeper meaning, a reason why this small incident was written down? Are we as diseased as the ten lepers? Lazarus was raised from the dead. The Canaanite woman asked for crumbs from the Lord’s Table. How do these events affect us in our modern life?
Join us this Lent every Thursday at the Chapel, from the 7th of March to the 11th of April at 5.45 in the evening, as we meditate and prepare ourselves for the most sacred time of the Christian year. We will celebrate the climax of this solemn preparation with the “Cross & Triumph of Christ” on 31st March 2019, 6.30 p.m. at the Chapel.
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