May
my words be in the name of the Holy & Undivided Trinity: Father,
Son, & Holy Spirit.
Today
is Ash Wednesday which marks the first day of Lent. I well remember
my first Lent – or rather, the first Lent I actually engaged with
in the sense of giving stuff up.
I
was seven. We were living with my grandparents on their farm near
Newmarket in North Cork. Our teacher, Mrs FitzPatrick, was quite
religious – well, wasn't everyone back then? - and she encouraged
us children to take the season seriously by giving something up.
Now
this was back in what now seems like the dark ages. Television was
black and white and had only one channel. There was no internet or
mobile phones back then, so none of your 'digital fasts' from their
beloved devices that are popular with some these days. No, back then
giving things up meant giving up some tasty food item you were
particularly fond of. Adults tended to go without milk and sugar in
their tea – and perhaps the biscuits that normally went with it. Or
maybe the drink. And children gave up sweets.
I
found this both hard and surprisingly easy. Hard, because, as we all
know, sweet things are pretty much addictive, so saying 'no' to them
voluntarily is tough. On the other hand, children didn't have much
money back then. This made sweets an occasional treat. I think my
intake at the time would have been limited to a few penny sweets from
the shop near the school a couple of days a week; with the odd
chocolate bar thrown in … but something as large as a chocolate bar
always had to be shared with friends, which meant you could only
reasonably expect to eat at most half of any bar you bought.
So
with relatively few sweets in my life my first Lent was tough - but
not so bad that I thought it was going to kill me. And, of course, I
comforted myself with the thought of all the sweets I would buy when
it was all over. By the time I got to the end I had a whole lot of
pennies burning a hole in my pocket screaming at me 'Lent is over –
you can buy sweets again!' Not long after Easter Day we went to town
for the Fair Day and I bought all the sweets I would have eaten over
Lent at once. And then I ate them all. And felt dreadfully ill. I
didn't actually throw up, which was a blessing as the whole town
would have seen.
I
would like to think that I have learned a little more about what the
meaning of Lent is since I was that little boy. I think of the season
as being a gift to us from God through his Church. It is a time that
allows us to bring very forcefully to mind the fact that we are
indeed sinners in need of redemption, sinners who need to repent.
That is the significance of ashes on Ash Wednesday – the use of
ashes being in keeping with the Biblical tradition of repenting in
sackcloth and ashes; a tradition emphasised by our Lord in chapter 11
of St Matthew's Gospel when he speaks wonderingly at the lack of
faith in certain cities that he has performed miracles in, and
remarks that if certain foreign cities that the Jews regarded as
sinful had seen such wonders they would have been moved to repent in
sackcloth and ashes.
Lent
is also a time that allows us to discipline ourselves in resisting
temptations. We do not give up things just for the sake of doing so,
or making some kind of a public display; no, we do it so that in
order by giving up things that we are allowed to have or do we may be
better able to resist doing things that are not in accordance with
God's will. Just as the athlete trains in order to be better able to
run the race, even though the training itself is not the race, so our
training in resisting allowing ourselves small but permitted
pleasures during Lent helps give us the self-mastery that will aid us
from falling prey to temptation and doing what we know to be wrong.
But
as I finish, one final thought. My first Lent as a child was perhaps
not done as well as it might have been. But it was done with a
childlike sincerity and simplicity. And our Lord, we know, exhorted
us, to be like little children if we were to enter into the kingdom.
So my prayer for you today is the hope that you may recapture some of
your own childlike wonder and innocence as you engage with the season
of Lent this year; and thereby grow stronger in the faith and closer
to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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