In terms of the
Church’s Calendar, this February offers us a bit of time off. The season of Christmas
and Epiphany ends with the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple
(Candlemas), which we will celebrate on Sunday 3rd February. Then it’s
“Ordinary Time” until Lent begins on Ash Wednesday - not until 6th March,
because Easter is so late this year. I don’t remember when we had quite so much
time to fill in between the seasons - but it will be no bad thing!
Time to take stock, I hope. I thought of
encouraging people to prepare for Lent - but actually Lent is the time you
prepare for Easter, so we should think of more than preparation. So I’m going
to see the weeks around these four Sundays as time just to set a rhythm for
daily living: “Ordinary Time,” we call them liturgically - or you might think
of them as “Empty Time,” and ask just how can I fill them wisely?
Work can be self-generating. Clear a space in
your busy diary and it can easily fill up with clutter. I’ve had enough of the
wrong sort of busy-ness recently, not least in lots of correspondence, discussion
and form-filling to do with our plans to install a new heating system. We’ve
now reached the point where I think we’ve done all we can. Now there’s a period
of “Public Notice” lasting 28 days so that people can know officially what we
intend. Then hopefully we can get on with the job. And it will be Lent by then
probably. I hope that the new system will be running before Easter - it would
be good to walk out of the Hall as we usually do for our Palm Sunday
Procession, enter the church - and stay there!
But first some time to pause - can we use it to
listen to what God is saying in gentleness and peace?
Martin Jackson
From the February issue of the Parish Magazine - click to find it online!
