Lent 2025 – Tending Hearts
Lent is a time to reflect deeply on our spiritual lives and the habits of the heart that sustain our humanity and support us in living abundantly, with openness and with courage.
As the natural world is enlivened and awakened by an increase in daylight hours and sunshine at this time of the year, so we are invited to revive ourselves by tending to our hearts through spiritual practice. Lent is a quiet, sacred season where we're invited to reassess, renew, and revive our lives where they have fallen out of alignment with God's call to love and justice. As one writer puts it, lent "is a time during which we gather the forces needed to meet the vital renewal of our lives."*
Sundays in Lent, 10:30am
This season: An invitation to explore the habits that help us tend to “heart” – our own and others.
Our tradition at RUC during the season of Lent is to pair a "life text" (a recent film) in conversation with a biblical text. How do they speak to each other? And how does the conversation between them point us to a more abundant faith and life? This year we’ll be asking: How do these texts invite us to tend to our hearts? You don't need to have seen the films in advance to get something out of the service.
Holy Week 2025
We usher in the annual storytelling that so defines the movement built on the life of Jesus. So much of what characterizes the practice of our faith rises out of our memory of these days: the shared meal, acts of service and humility, our conviction that nothing overcomes the love of God. We hope you can take the opportunity to join us for one or all of these special gatherings.
Palm Sunday, April 13, 10:30am
A liminal Sunday of both celebration and foreshadowing, loud hosannas and the beginning of lament. We will also celebrate communion.
Maundy Thursday, April 17, 7pm a joint service, at Metropolitan United Church
We will join in the commemoration of the Last Supper, and Jesus' washing the feet of the disciples at Metropolitan United (56 Queen St. E); a simple and meditative service led by Rev. Dr. Kristin Philipson, Rev. Jason Meyers and Rev. Jim Harbell.
Good Friday, April 18, 10:30am
A service of stirring choral music with readings interspersed from the passion according to the Gospels.
Easter Sunday, April 20, 10:30am
A day to recall this fundamental message of the faith, that the Life that was in Jesus did not die, but continued, and continues to live among us. A riot of daffodils and a message of celebration. Our Easter Sunday service includes a special Sunday School program for elementary-aged children, and a staffed nursery for children five and under.
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**From All Year Round: A Calendar of Celebrations, by Ann Druitt, Christine Fynes-Clinton, and Marije Rowling.
