Year of Faith: Lent

LENT CHANGE IN WHAT WE SEE, DO, HEAR

RCIA WELCOME

The pilgrimage through Lent to Easter is like a journey through life - spiritual life - towards God through the power of his Spirit operating in the reality of our lives to bring us peace. We are invited to recognise the movement of the Spirit as the core experience of human life.


For some months now, Lara Graham and Linda McCoy have been preparing to be received into the Church at this year’s Easter Vigil. More recently, Paul Ellis has been preparing to be received at Pentecost.


Lara’s husband Alan is already a member of our Parish, and their two little boys were baptised here last year. Linda has been pondering over her decision for several years, during which time she has been a member of the Episcopal Church. Paul already has firm roots in the Church of Scotland.


On Sunday 17 February, they and their Parish sponsors and catechists will take part in the Rite of Election in the Cathedral. This Rite is celebrated annually on this day all over the world for those who are led by the Holy Spirit to join the global community of the Roman Catholic Church, and is a way of helping them to see themselves as part of a worldwide community within the Church - which, truly to be a Church must be truly a community. Three of our catechists, Margaret, Margaret-Rose and Lynn - have been invited to participate in the Rite as Readers. Also attending with his mu Pauline, is fifth year student Lewis Gordon, who is preparing with deep reverence and joy to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation at the Easter Vigil here in our church. Parish sponsors to Lara, Linda and Paul are our parishioners Maureen Hall, Helen Biggins and Norman Sawers. Several years ago, Norman entered the Church through RCIA and now helps Paul follow that path.


Parish sponsors are invited by RCIA to represent all of us as we prepare to extend a warm welcome into our Parish community - and so into the Mystical Body of Christ - the newly baptised and confirmed.


Please remember Lara, Lewis and Paul in your prayers.

“The place of the soul is a land where our deepest spirit lives - a land we are slow to enter.”

Father Daniel O’Leary, (writing on Lenten journeys)

LENT JOURNEY OF A SOUL

Too much work, anxiety and a relentless stress are filling our days and nights. It takes great courage to set about regaining the lost rhythm of the soul, and we generally postpone the work of self-realisation, of the ultimate questions. We forget that if we do not live our lives abundantly now, we never will. And as death approaches, we bitterly regret the greatest tragedy of all - our unlived lives.


The journey of a soul is never clear, direct or final. We need to keep resetting our spiritual compass so as to follow the intimate longings with which we are born, the half-remembered memory of the way forward. There is no self-help shortcut - old and shallow patterns of existence have to die for something beautiful to be born. As we surrender ourselves to the “condition of complete simplicity” we begin to glimpse the possibility of committing ourselves to a life of compassion, contemplation and creativity.


We are taught that God’s divine presence is all around us, but how do we use this knowledge in transforming our everyday lives? The answer is... “We must become an extension of the Creator, and by bringing compassionate mindfulness into the routine of our days, we will sense gold in the rubble of our lives. Even in the humblest work of our hands, we serve to complete magnificently the highest levels of creation.”

“Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in love in a quite absolute and final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”


Fr Pedro Arrupe

Note the colour change in the vestments of the priest and deacon, and in the banner and altar cloths - the change from the green of Ordinary Time to the lilac (purple) of Lent, until we reach the Solemnity of Easter when the change of liturgical colours to gold and white is then made.

Note that the Gloria is neither said nor sung between Ash Wednesday and the Easter Vigil when the Great Exultet will be sing or recited throughout the world to celebrate the Resurrection.

Note the removal of all the flowers and plants from the Sanctuary, from the side altar and from all shrines located in the church.


These changes help bring to mind for us that Lent is a time of fast and abstinence, and inner exercise of the mind aimed at increasing our control over ourselves in our actions - through control of physical desires and urges - to remind us that we encounter God in simplicity of surroundings - in “desert like locations” which lead us into meditative, silent prayer in contemplation of Him revealed to us in Jesus, His Son.

Mother Teresa was asked, “What do you say when you pray?” She replied, “Nothing, I just listen.”


The person asking quickly added, “So, what does God say when you listen?” She replied, “Nothing, He just listens.”

And so we must begin to live again,

We of the damaged bodies

And assaulted minds

Starting from scratch

With the rubble of our lives

And picking up the dust of dreams

Once dreamt.