February 21, 2021: The Lenten Year with Tia Noelle Pratt, Ph.D.

Preaching for the First Sunday of Lent, Tia Noelle Pratt, PhD offers a reflection on the Lenten Year we have all experienced:   "It feels like we’ve had more suffering than one year can hold.  It has truly been a Lenten year. Yet, Lent brings with it the promise of Easter rebirth and renewal.  We truly have gotten this far by faith.  It is a faith that has been sustained by prayer and the promise of God’s covenant with Noah and the promise that God’s ways are love and truth. As we reflect on this first Sunday of Lent and in the days and weeks to come, we must not forget the sacrifice and suffering we have borne and witnessed in the last year.  Doing so would dishonor all of that pain and all of that loss.  Instead, we must prayerfully embrace it because that will allow us to see the rebirth and renewal that comes with the light of Easter."    Tia Noelle Pratt, PhD is a sociologist of religion specializing in systemic racism in the Catholic Church.  She received her PhD in Sociology from Fordham University in 2010.  For more than twenty years, Dr. Pratt has researched and written about how systemic racism impacts African-American Catholic identity.  She is the President and Director of Research at TNPratt & Associates, LLC an Inclusion and Diversity consulting firm in Philadelphia, PA and the curator of the #BlackCatholicsSyllabus.     Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/02212021 to learn more about Dr. Pratt, to view her video or read her text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.