Return: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation

This Lent, reorient your thoughts and heart so that you can completely experience the joy of Easter— Christ's victory over sin and death.In this lovely guided journal for prayer and meditation, Fr. John Burns, author of the bestseller and award-winning book Adore, urges you to let go of your confusion, negative attachments, and sin, so you might return to the Lord and achieve true and lasting conversion.The prophet Joel calls us to wholehearted conversion in the liturgy's first reading on Ash Wednesday: "Even now, says the Lord, return to me, with your whole heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning, rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God" (Jl 2:12–13).Burns explores these two verses each week throughout Lent:Week 1, return to me—recognize the need to reorient our lives through Lent;Week 2, return to me with your whole heart—reorient not only the mind but also the heart to the Lord;Week 3, return to me with fasting—acknowledge hardness of heart and the value of discipline;Week 4, return to me with weeping and mourning—bring forward personal agonies and unbind hidden bitterness that divides us from God; andWeek 5, Rend your hearts, not your garments, return to the Lord, your God.Then, throughout Holy Week and Easter, you are asked to weave your personal tales into the Paschal Mystery.Burns begins your meditations on the forty days leading up to Easter Sunday with the opening prayer of each day's Mass, known as the Collect. He also emphasizes the ancient Lenten habits of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, which serve as our sacred penance during this somber season and eventually bring us to heaven.Every day of Return includes the Collect prayer, an inspiring meditation, thought-provoking reflection questions, and a prayer. There's also plenty of room for journaling.Josiah Henley of Heart of IESVS created the magnificent original art for Return.   Read More Read Less