Monthly Letters

Dear friends in Christ,

Lent is a season that invites us to pay attention to hunger, not only the hunger of the body, but the deeper hungers that shape our lives, our choices, and our common life together.

In the dystopian adventure series The Hunger Games, we are offered the portrait of a world divided between the Capitol’s excess and the districts’ sacrificial hunger. It is a society built on competition and survival, where suffering is normalised and hunger is weaponised and controlled. Though fictional, it echoes a reality Scripture names clearly: a world where abundance and injustice exist side by side (Amos 8:4–6).
Lent calls us to imagine another way.

Sacrifice Over Self-Preservation
In the arena, survival is everything. Compassion becomes dangerous. Yet Jesus rejects this logic. In the wilderness, he refuses to secure himself through power or control (Matthew 4:1–11), and later teaches, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). This Lent, we might ask where fear has narrowed our love. What would it mean to choose one costly act of faithfulness each week; an honest conversation, an act of reconciliation, or standing with someone who is overlooked?

The Hungering Dark
Hunger is not only physical. Beneath the surface lies what might be called a “hungering dark”: loneliness, grief, anxiety, spiritual exhaustion. The psalms give voice to this longing: “My soul thirsts for God” (Psalm 42:2). Lent offers space to name these hidden hungers honestly. Setting aside time for silence, journaling, or praying a psalm of lament can help us attend to what we usually avoid, trusting that “the Lord is near to the broken-hearted” (Psalm 34:18).

The Cost of Bread
Bread is never just bread. Jesus reminds us that “one does not live by bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4). In a world where some have far more than they need while others go without, Lent sharpens our awareness of the true cost of our consumption. Fasting, whether from food, habits, or comforts, can become an act of solidarity, freeing resources for generosity and attention to those who hunger. Christ offers himself as the bread of life (John 6:35), calling us to a deeper nourishment shaped by trust and justice.

Confronting Injustice
Perhaps the greatest danger is indifference. The prophets warn against fasting that ignores the hungry and oppressed (Isaiah 58:6–7). Lent invites us to see again: to learn, to give, to speak, and to act, however modestly, rather than turning away.
As we journey toward the cross and beyond it to resurrection, may God deepen our hunger for what truly gives life, and draw us into the costly, hopeful work of love.

With prayer for you this Lent,

Lusa Nsenga-Ngoy
Bishop of Willesden

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

Epiphany greets us this year not with easy clarity, but with searching light. As 2026 unfolds, many sense that we are entering a season of strain: fragile geopolitics, anxious public discourse, deepening fractures within societies and between nations. We are repeatedly told that the crisis of our time is a crisis of belonging; that if only we could fix the problem of membership, identity, and borders, we might finally heal the world. Even the Church is tempted to believe this story, mistaking the defence of identity for the work of the gospel.

Yet Epiphany offers a deeper and more demanding truth: God is revealed not by resolving our fears, but by entering them.

Isaiah speaks of “treasures of darkness, riches hidden in secret places.” The early Church understood this not as a poetic flourish, but as a theological claim. Gregory of Nyssa taught that God is encountered not only in light, but in the cloud of unknowing, where certainty gives way to trust. The Epiphany hymns of Ephrem the Syrian revel in paradox: the Infinite made small, the King recognised by outsiders, the borders of holiness redrawn around mercy rather than purity. Augustine reminds us that the Magi find Christ not in Herod’s palace, where power clings anxiously to control, but in vulnerability, strangeness, and grace. Having seen him, they return home “by another road,” because the old routes no longer lead to life.

When identity becomes the primary lens through which we read the world, darkness is no longer something to be explored with God, but something to be feared and expelled. Belonging hardens into exclusion; memory curdles into nostalgia; faith is reduced to cultural defence. These are the idols of the past that quietly promise security while shrinking our hope.

Epiphany exposes these idols, not to shame us, but to free us. The incarnation proclaims that God does not save the world by perfecting civilisation, but by entering its brokenness. Christ is not the guarantor of our boundaries, but the one who crosses them. The light of Epiphany does not eliminate darkness; it reveals the treasure hidden within it.

This Epiphany, we are invited to ask what it might mean, for us as individuals and as worshipping communities, to return to the future by a different road. What fears might we release? What certainties might we loosen? Where might God already be at work in places we have learned to avoid? In that spirit, I warmly encourage you to take part in our diocesan Lent offering, Treasures of Darkness: Discipleship in Times of Mystery and Unknowing. I encourage you to consider how your parish might engage with this Lenten journey, as a whole community, through small groups, or by inviting individuals to participate. Together, may we learn again how to follow Christ not by clinging to the light we think we possess, but by trusting the God who meets us in the dark and leads us home by grace.

Dear friends,

As the warmth of summer yields to the amber light of autumn, we find ourselves once again in a season of change. The earth reminds us that endings and beginnings are entwined: every falling leaf carries both loss and promise, every shift invites reflection, gratitude, and trust.

This past week brought significant news for our diocese, the appointment of Bishop Sarah, the Bishop of London to the See of Canterbury. It is good news indeed for the wider Church, yet it also brings questions and mixed emotions for us here in London. Times of leadership transition stir gratitude for what has been, and curiosity, sometimes anxiety, about what is yet to come.

The in-between sense of life is also visible among our clergy and lay colleagues. Some are moving on, leaving roles or parishes they have faithfully served; others are arriving, beginning new journeys and opening fresh possibilities. We inhabit this threshold together, feeling the pull of departure, the excitement of arrival, and the subtle tension of all that is changing.

Earlier this month, I spent a day with clergy holding Permission to Officiate reflecting on this very theme Mind the Gap: Transitions, Liminality and Boundaries. Drawing on the work of anthropologists like Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, we explored how transitions move us from what was, through a liminal “in-between” space, toward what will be. These thresholds, though unsettling, can become sacred ground: places of listening, re-imagining, and renewal.

Scripture reminds us that God’s transforming work often happens at the edges: with Hagar in the wilderness, Moses before the burning bush, The Samaritan woman at the well, or the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Walter Brueggemann reminds us that faith is “holy disorientation… an invitation into pilgrimage.”

So as we navigate this season, in nature, in our diocese, and in our own lives, may we mind the gap with attentiveness and hope. The God who meets us in the in-between, in the comings and goings of colleagues and friends, will guide us toward what is next, with grace enough for the journey.

With every blessing,

Lusa Nsenga-Ngoy
Bishop of Willesden