Sister Liz Dodd, an activist and journalist, draws on feminist and Liberation theologies, as well as her work with refugees and her adventures cycling around the world, to outline a new spirituality for social justice. This Lent she challenges Christians to do more than give up chocolate: Lent is God’s invitation to shake up your life, rattle your parish, and change the world.

Learn from Jesus the spiritualities that he passed onto his disciples, including solidarity, poverty, hospitality, peace-making and protest. Explore ways to practise them against racism, inequality, homelessness and the climate crisis alongside spiritual guides including Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr and Pope Francis.

This book is a companion to the six weeks of Lent, with each week and its gospel focus corresponding to one of Jesus’ six spiritualities of social justice. It culminates in a fresh look at the traditions of Holy Week. Each chapter includes questions for reflection and a suggested spiritual practice, making it ideal for use with a group as well as for personal prayer.

When it comes to inhabiting life fully, Mary is surely one of our greatest role models. ‘My soul magnifies the Lord,’ she sings in the Magnificat. Her spirited response to the Angel Gabriel’s announcement that she is to bear the son of God is rich in nuance, contradiction and paradox.

These very characteristics inspire Bishop Guli to make connections between the themes of Advent and her own experiences – and to invite us to do the same.

Bishop Guli’s forced exile from her homeland has echoes of the flight into Egypt; the murder of her brother Bahram during the Iranian Revolution of the slaughter of the innocents. She writes intriguingly of how angels continue speaking to us today; how fear can prevent us from living well in the present; how pain and loss can be transformed by the power of beauty.

Deepening its resonance, each chapter is linked to a piece of music, prompting us to consider: what are the enduring melodies that sustain us as the vibrant stories of our lives unfold?

In this 2025 Lent Book, Erik Varden starts by examining the New Testament where it spells out why Christ’s wounds were efficacious for the healing of humankind. Indeed, why they were necessary for the purpose. This austere way of thinking is indispensable but it has never really satisfied the effective needs of believers or the intuitions of the heart.

Bob Dylan once said, tongue in cheek, ‘Pain sure does bring out the best in people.’ The philosopher Donald MacKinnon said, ‘Suffering never ennobled anyone.’ Suffering by nature poses questions people wrestle with today in many fields of life with counsellors, therapists, philosophers, and spiritual directors. But the conundrum remains and in this book Varden sets out to resolve it.

In John Bunyan’s timeless allegory, Christian sets off on a journey to find salvation. His path is not easy, and he is beset by trials, including the destructive Apollyon and the Giant Despair, as he pursues his pilgrimage through the Slough of Despond, the Delectable Mountains and Vanity Fair towards the Celestial City. In the second part of the narrative his wife, Christiana, is escorted by Great-Heart through the same difficult terrain. Written with the urgency of persecuted faith and a fiery imagination while its author was in prison, The Pilgrim’s Progress is a spiritual as well as a literary classic.

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Roger Pooley