St. Hubert's Episcopal Church

Ash Wednesday kicks off this year’s Lent Madness, a single-elimination tournament featuring 32 of the saints of the church calendar. Who will win the Golden Halo? Enter your bracket before Feb 22 to participate. 

Q: How do I participate? 

A: Pick up bracket sheets in the River Room, or download and print  http://www.lentmadness.org/wpcontent/uploads/2012/01/LentMadness2012BracketColor.pdf and fill it out. Be sure to put your name at the top! You can fill out more than one bracket if you want. Submit it to Jim Hoyt (aka Hooter) or Denise Miller and follow the excitement on http://lentmadness.org.  

Q: Is there a cost? 

A: This is optional, but we’re asking a donation of $10 per sheet. At the end of the tournament, the winner will determine where all of the proceeds will go: The Bishop’s Annual Appeal, Cedar Hills Scholarship Fund, or Trinity Cathedral’s Sunday Dinner program. The winner will be awarded a copy of Hour by Hour, a small and portable daily prayer book perfect for slipping into a purse, a pocket, or a glove box. 

Q: How do the saints compete against each other? 

A: Each matchup will have a full 24 hours of voting at http://lentmadness.org so you and hundreds of others from around the Episcopal Church will be picking the winners.  

Q: Who are the past winners? 

A: Lent Madness 2011 was won by C. S. Lewis, who narrowly defeated Thomas Becket by 7 votes. The first Lent Madness was won by priest and poet George Herbert, who beat out Julian of Norwich. 

Q: Is this an official thing? 

A: An official Episcopal Church thing? No. It was started in 2010 by Fr. Tim Schenck who serves at St. John’s in Hingham, Massachusetts. The first two years were so popular that this year’s Lent Madness is sponsored by Forward Movement, the publishers of Forward Day by Day and all those tracts in the rack on the table outside Dan’s office. 

Q: How do I find out more about these saints? 

A: There are a few resources on http://www.lentmadness.org/resources/. There are also biographies of the saints available at http://satucket.com/lectionary/Calendar.htm and on the Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music’s website at http://liturgyandmusic.wordpress.com. You can enter the name of the saint in the search box in the top right corner.

Q: How will scoring be done? 

A: There are many different ways of scoring brackets. To strike a balance between correctly picking early rounds and correctly guessing the winner, we’ll award 2 points for first round picks, 3 for second round picks, then 5, 8, and 13. This gives a total of 105 possible points, and the possible points from each round are 32, 24, 20, 16, and 13. Don’t worry about the points, though. Hooter will track them and announce the rankings each week. 

Q: This doesn’t seem very Lenten somehow. 

A: Lent is a season that summons us to focus on the fullness of the Christian faith as we prepare to celebrate the Paschal mystery of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. There’s nothing that says we can’t have fun during Lent, especially if it helps us to learn more about the lives of these saints, our brothers and sisters in the Christian life, and shining examples of God’s grace made manifest!

Thanks to Fr. Chris of St. Mary’s, Middlesboro KY for this Q & A.