Dear Friends,
A wise person once said to me that the secret of keeping the Church’s season of Lent, is to ‘be more, with less’. That is well worth thinking upon and trying to practise, as we enter these forty days of preparation for Holy Week and Easter, when we shall renew our baptismal promises. Lent is a time for us all to allow ourselves to become new people, Easter people, with mind and heart renewed.
Of course, the approach to Lent often seems to sound very different from this. We hear invitations to keep Lent which are more like admonitions to do more and more. In our very busy lives, that is the last thing we need.
We may be urged to spend more time in devotional exercises, in educational programmes, and in work for social justice, but such demands may just cram our spirits even more. All these may be excellent activities for us, but only if they open our spirit and give it space for renewal.
It is good if Lent can be a time for cutting back, for a return to simplicity of living, for renewed relationships with God, and for a restoration of balance within ourselves. Again, we can make very hard work of this.
‘Be more, with less.’ Being ‘more’ means freeing our spirit to grow in the refreshing air of God’s Holy Spirit, acknowledging our total dependence on God for our being and identity. We can be ‘more’ if we depend upon God’s promises to us, and find in those promises the motivation to be faithful to one another and the created order we inhabit.
One liturgical writer says this about the Church’s keeping of Lent:
Lenten liturgy is not a time for extravaganza. A few simple touches and variations are all that are required. We need to be directed towards our failings as a human race and we need to be directed towards God’s promises of renewal and restoration. The Church’s liturgy of Lent allows that journey to take place with a minimal amount of suggestion.
This is the journey we are about to begin. On Wednesday at Mass we are marked with ash as a sign of our commitment to the new spirit of our journey. With God’s help we can be much more, with much less.
May God bless you all.
Peter Williams
