Lent - time to re-launch!

From the March issue of our Parish Magazine - click to view in full...

Can we envisage a time when things might return to being what we used to call normal?

I’m not convinced that we can get there simply by the lifting of Covid restrictions as though the virus had gone away. In fact I think that is simply going to make life more difficult for the clinically vulnerable, and for those of us who have loved ones in hospital or residential care. Currently I have to test five or six times a week including a PCR before I can don mask, aprons and gloves to get into my mother’s room. That won’t change while lockdowns in the care sector remain.

But there does need to be a return to what is “normal” when it comes to maintaining (or perhaps recovering) our spiritual health. And Lent is a good time to do that. I realise that I have to offer a full programme for all our sakes - and I hope people will take it up and join in. I was moved by the words of Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, in writing to his people:

Beginning on Ash Wednesday, we respond to the Lord’s invitation to come forward and meet him afresh. He invites us to come through the doors of the church to stand before him and receive his blessing, his mark of mercy. 

Lent is the time to reset our patterns so that there is time for God in our hearts and in our weekly routines. You know well that the highest form of prayer is the celebration of the Eucharist. It is here, above all other places, that the Lord wishes to fill us with his gifts, so that we, in turn, can offer those gifts to others. And then, when we give that which we have received, we bring this precious light of Christ into our world. He is the best antidote to the darkness of the pandemic, to the loneliness it has brought, to the lack of clear hope for the future, to the deep weariness and unexpressed resentment that has entered into the souls of so many.

Then we can journey together to Easter…

It may seem a difficult journey - I write on the day Russia has launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Let’s at least be faithful in prayer!

Martin Jackson