The 2025 Lent Book is a reflection on suffering and healing and what we understand by it.

Are we healed through our wounds or are our wounds themselves healed from some other source?

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.