Mark’s Reviews > Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal > Status Update

"...the sadness of Lent is not a general sadness about the inevitability of death but an explicitly Christian diagnosis of the cause of death. We sin and die because humanity rebelled against God. There is nothing natural at all about death. It is an alien intrusion into the good world God created. It is an enemy to be defeated."

"The good news is that at the moment we see the gap between ourselves and our Lord, we also encounter the blood that draws us in and assures us we are forgiven. Jesus' own presence is both grace and judgment."