The prospect of Lent always seems more daunting than the reality. The idea of entering the desert places and being confronted by one’s own demons fills me with a degree of dread and reluctance. Yet one of the modern Eucharistic prefaces speaks of ‘this joyful season’ whether with a hint of irony or an experiential wisdom I am never sure. Certainly the rhythm of the season and the dawning of spring lend an increasingly positive note to the celebration. 

We are the Easter people – as S Augustine reminds us – but the fullness of grace and glory promised us in the Resurrection can only be glimpsed when we have cleared out the accumulated junk and the stale securities of the journey so far. Lent really is about pulling out the cooker in our soul’s kitchen and, having baulked at the sight that confronts us, getting on with the job of cleaning up. The opportunities of walking the Stations of the Cross or making a serious effort at self-examination and taking advantage, perhaps for the first time, of the sacrament of reconciliation (confession) – these may seem to be part and parcel of the annual invitation of Lenten discipline. But each year there is a new layer of mouldy habits and complacent satisfaction that threatens to obscure further the image of God which is in us. So such opportunities should be greeted afresh. 

This is not just a personal undertaking. Families and congregations harbour as many bacteria and as much painful memory as the individuals within them. The greater difficulty is for such communities to own their collective responsibility and to work together by grace to transform the corporate life. 

This is our task as the Easter people of
S Bartholomew’s. As always, the Easter we celebrate this year will be different to every Easter that has gone before, simply because this coming Lent, as always, will be the freshest opportunity we have in the cycle of the year to take a forty-day long, hard look at ourselves and at the community we are, to name the demons that we have tried too long to control rather than be rid of, and to allow the dawning of God’s future to make the journey of ‘the joyful season’ increasingly a positive one, to raise us beyond ourselves to Easter fulfilment.

With my love and prayers,

Fr David Clues