Our 2024 LENTEN Meditation Journey . . .

During Lent, we pray . . . “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” – Psalm 51:11. Prayer is powerful, and when we pray for each other, we truly are working together for lasting change.

The meditations focus on embracing this new heart, this new life in Christ, and looking deep within ourselves and acting in ways that seek and serve Christ in others. Our 2024 meditations follow the schedule of Scripture readings from the lectionarypage.net, which includes both the Revised Common Lectionary for Sundays and feast days and the daily eucharistic readings.

So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. – Matthew 27:59–60

About a year ago, the United States Surgeon General warned of an epidemic of loneliness. He described acute isolation as significantly more widespread than previously imagined and as equally or more dangerous to Americans’ health as smoking and obesity. I found myself thinking about this epidemic of loneliness while reading Matthew 27:57–66, which describes Joseph of Arimathea wrapping Jesus’ body in cloth, laying the body in a tomb, rolling a stone to shut the tomb and walking away.

Jesus is isolated and shut away, separated by a wall of cold stone.

In Christian tradition, Holy Saturday commemorates the time when Jesus descended into the depths of hell. I recently saw a dramatic, medieval Christian painting portraying Jesus entering hell through the open
mouth of a crocodile-like demon. As a person in the twenty-first century, though, I imagine this scene somewhat less literally. Today, as Jesus is entombed, I imagine Jesus entering the hell of acute loneliness, descending to the depths of isolation and pain.

Tradition has it that Jesus enters hell in order to share in this experience—and to redeem and  liberate us from its grip on our lives. Let us pray that this may be so. There is so much isolation and loneliness in our world today and so much hunger for genuine connection. Easter has much to do with the grace found in friendship and community.

Reflect on how the Good News of the Resurrection can take away the sting of loneliness. How can you be Christ’s hands and feet in that work? 

TODAY’S READINGS 

Psalm 31:1–4,15–16 | Job 14:1–14 or Lamentations 3:1–9,19–24 | 1 Peter 4:1–8 | Matthew 27:57–66 or John 19:38–42

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