Thoughts from the Benefice

Lent, like Easter, is late this year: it starts with Ash Wednesday on the 5th. But what is Lent? It’s a period of preparation for Easter, the most important festival of the Christian year, and of course it leads up to Easter Sunday – 46 days in all. Shrove Tuesday (4 March), or Pancake Day, is known in many countries as Mardi Gras (‘Fat Tuesday’) when people would eat fatty foods before they started their fast in Lent. They might also celebrate with a carnival, and that still happens in many South American countries today.

Then on Ash Wednesday people would go to holy communion in church and the priest would place ashes made from palm branches blessed on the previous year’s Palm Sunday on their heads with the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It’s a serious time after the celebrations of the day before.

Christians have observed Lent since the earliest days of the Church and traditionally they did it through prayer, doing penance, mortifying the flesh, repenting their sins, giving alms, and of course fasting. But modern priorities have changed – most of us no longer do penance or mortify our flesh. In our busy world, Lent is an opportunity to reflect upon our patterns, to pray, to experience sorrow for what we’ve done and failed to do, and to be generous to those in need – and, heaven knows, there are many of them, even in our villages.

So, I’d suggest it’s more helpful to see Lent not so much as a time when we give things up, such as eating chocolate, or drinking alcohol, although many people still find that useful. No, it’s perhaps better to see it as a time when we reflect on our lives and think about refocussing our priorities. As Donal Neary, a Jesuit, has written: “The focus of Lent is not on what we give up but on what we are given. We focus our minds on the self-giving love of Jesus which we will celebrate in Holy Week. We allow ourselves to believe in this love. Often, it’s difficult to believe in the tender love of God. This conquers all else in the world; it is given in the mercy and compassion of God.

“Lent pours the grace of forgiveness into our world, both for us as individuals and as a people. We need to know that God is bigger than any of our sins, wars, violence and hatred. God wants his kingdom to come now. Lent is our time of saying ‘yes’ to a partnership with God in saving the world from the effects of evil and sin.”

Roger Bland