Preparing for Lent 2026

Blessings. Today is Wednesday following Sexagesima Sunday, exactly one week before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday, 18 February 2026. Today, the Church commemorates the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes on February 11, 1858.

As a way to deepen into my Lenten retreat this year, I will aim to publish a new AI-generated image and some commentary on N.T. Wright's Lent for Everyone: Matthew - A Daily Devotional every day by noon Eastern (beginning on February 18).

If you would like to follow along as part of your Lenten prayer commitment, comments here on the blog from fellow retreat participants will be most welcome. Especially from you, Duffy Gardner in Vermont! You are the spiritual co-leader of this retreat, if not the leader. 

I have no intention of prescribing what any of you should do in terms of fasting during Lent this year. That is entirely up to you, God, your families, and maybe your Spiritual Director if you are fortunate enough to have one of those and are discerning a "Rule of Life" for this penitential season. What I will say, however, is that I am willing to share some experience and encouragement with fasting if that would be helpful to any of you. Going vegan for Lent is an excellent way to fast, and I have a lot of experience with that since I first became vegan in 2005. Giving up pornography is another important way to fast. I've been happily celibate and peacefully porn-free since 2021, so this is something else I have experience with. I also have experience with a post-2021 Lent retreat where I only ate one vegan meal a day, and I rolled a three-day water fast in there, too. I don't know yet if I am called to repeat this in 2026. But I do very much suspect that I need to work on a screen fast from 6 PM to 6 AM every day during this Lent. I am trying it out right now. It will be hard for me to get it perfect all the way through the penitential season. Maybe aiming for perfection is the wrong outlook here. 

In terms of almsgiving, our third Lent pillar, I have started making a monthly tithe to Zoom Workplace Pro so that I can host some free small group religious education classes and maybe even some cell church meetings in 2026. I would offer to host a weekly small-group session with fellow students of Wright's Lent for Everyone: Matthew starting this Sunday the 15th or Monday the 16th of February, but I am probably not far enough along in my facilitator formation yet. Still, let me know if this is something you would be interested in and I will give it some thought. I think if four people are interested, including me and you, Duffy, I could pull it off. Maybe Sundays or Mondays at 7 PM Eastern.

Thanks for reading.