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Ælfric of Eynsham, 10th-century English Benedictine monk, from a sermon
God gives forgiveness to penitent persons and illuminates their minds with his gentle forgiveness, and afterwards he comforts them, because he is the Spirit of Comfort. The test of our love for God is that we be kind to one another. In other words, God wants us to act, so we can honor him with our good works—not by naked words alone—because love is shown through action. If love isn't willing to work, then it isn't love.

Carmen Acevedo Butcher is associate professor of English and scholar-in-residence at Shorter College in Rome, Georgia.

Read more about Lent in A Lenten Journey: Stations of the Cross, with the Spiritual Classics, by Carmen Acevedo Butcher, to be released in 2009 by Paraclete Press. The translations above come from this work. For more information on studying the Bible and engaging in Christian contemplative prayer, see The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counsel, translated by Carmen Acevedo Butcher (Shambhala, 2009), and for more information on Ælfric, see God of Mercy: Ælfric's Sermons and Theology (Mercer University Press, 2006).

Discover ways to celebrate Lent by reading Elizabeth Diffin's article "Lent for the Non-Liturgical." Your Lent experience may also be enriched by Sherwood E. Wirt's Christianity Today article "Let's Lengthen Lent." An accessible spiritual formation guide, compiled in 2007 by the InterVarsity Faculty Ministry Leadership Team, is "Taking Time Apart," which you can download in pdf format, reprint, and distribute free of charge.

Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Christian History & Biography magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Christian History & Biography.

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