Return: A Guided Lent Journal for Prayer and Meditation

By Fr. John Burns and Josiah Henley

Reorient your mind and heart this Lent so you can more fully experience the joy of Easter—Christ’s victory over sin and death.

In this beautiful guided journal for prayer and meditation, Fr. John Burns—author of the bestselling and award-winning book Adore—invites you to strip away your confusion, attachments, and sin so you can return to the Lord and undergo real and lasting conversion.

In the liturgy’s first reading on Ash Wednesday, the prophet Joel call us to wholehearted conversion: “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).

Each week throughout Lent, Burns breaks down these two verses:

• 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; and
• Week 5, Rend your hearts, not your garments, return to the Lord, your God.

 

Then, during Holy Week and the Resurrection on Easter, you are invited to weave your own stories into that of the Paschal Mystery.

Burns uses the opening prayer of each day’s Mass—called the Collect—as a starting point for your meditations through the forty days leading up to Easter Sunday. He also focuses on the traditional Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, which come together as our sacred penance during this solemn season, and ultimately lead us to heaven.

Each day of Return includes the prayer from the Collect, an inspiring meditation, thought-provoking reflection questions, and a prayer. There’s plenty of space for journaling as well.

Return features stunning original art by Josiah Henley of Heart of IESVS. Free weekly companion videos, a downloadable discussion guide, and other resources make this book perfect for parish-wide, individual, and book club use leading up to Easter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ave Maria Press
• Release date: Jan 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781646802173

Fr. John Burns

Fr. John Burns is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. He is the author of the bestselling books Adore: A Guided Advent Journal for Prayer and Meditation and Lift Up Your Heart: A 10-Day Personal Retreat with St. Francis de Sales. Ordained in 2010, Burns has served as an associate pastor and pastor in Milwaukee in addition to being an adjunct professor of moral theology at the Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology. He completed a doctorate in moral theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome in 2019. His doctoral research focused on the theology of healing through forgiveness. Burns speaks at conferences, preaches for missions, and directs retreats throughout the country. He works extensively with the Sisters of Life and St. Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, and has given retreats, conferences,and spiritual direction for the sisters in Africa, Europe, and the United States.

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Week of Ash Wednesday

Week of Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

Grant, O Lord, that we may begin with holy fasting

this campaign of Christian service,

so that, as we take up battle against spiritual evils,

we may be armed with weapons of self-restraint.

Collect for Mass of the Day

Today’s Readings

Jl 2:12–18; Ps 51; 2 Cor 5:20–6:2; Mt 6:1–6, 16–18

Memento Mori

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. These words, spoken over the recipient of the ashen smudge at Mass today, first came from the mouth of God. They are the final words of the sentence laid upon the first man, Adam, who listened not to the voice of God but heeded that of another. In the first sin, man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him (CCC 398).

The name Adam is actually a Hebrew word that means one who is made from the earth. The Latin word for earth, humus, anchors the English word human. Humility, the virtue opposed to the vice of pride, rises from the same root. The humble one remains well aware of humanity’s earthly origins; to be humble is literally to stay close to the earth and to maintain the proper ordering of creature to Creator.

The entire pattern of fallen humanity’s sinful machinations is an endless repetition of their attempt to live without God, a repetition in which they forget the damage caused by their last attempt. God’s words to the first man would, over time, become the basis of an ascetical practice taken up in every age, enshrined in meditations upon one’s own mortality: memento mori. Remember your death.

Throughout sacred scripture, ashes are a sign of repentance, a reminder of the dust. Salvation passes, throughout history, into the hearts of those who put off the arrogance of the ancient foe’s rebellion and humbly return to