Last week we entered into the season of Lent. This time of discipline and reflection is practiced across our differing church traditions in a variety of ways.

I appreciate the way in Eastern Orthodox traditions it is known as the ‘bright sadness’. This period of grief comes to an end with the celebration of Easter. 

We enter Lent with hope. 

It is this coming together of the themes of hope and sadness that gives Lent its poignancy and depth. Our reflection and repentance is both personal and communal. Lent is an invitation to pause, reflect, and recognise those matters that weigh on our hearts as part of our remembering of the death of Jesus. While this is a personal spiritual discipline, it is also an invitation to ponder our broader realities.

What would it mean if we as the peoples of Australia could enter, collectively, into such a season of Lenten repentance? Our focus may be on the continuing tragedy of the situation of Australia’s first people, highlighted in the ‘Closing the Gap’ report. Attention may also turn to the appalling levels of domestic violence and violence against women. We might find ourselves focussed on the gap between those with little and those with a lot. The global places of conflict would also come to mind.

Through this process, all of us first and second peoples of Australia would find new sensitivity to opportunities for transformative action, both small and large.

In this Lenten ‘bright sadness’ our prayer may open us to see and nurture new signs of hope. Indeed, this is what we as people of faith expect to see because of God’s continuing, abiding goodness and transforming love.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing."

Matthew 23:37

Rev John Gilmore

NCCA President