The Little Book of Lent: Daily Reflections from the World’s Greatest Spiritual Writers
Roger liked to recall that it was not a time for austerity or sorrow, or a period to cultivate guilt, but rather a season to sing the joy of forgiveness. He saw Lent as forty days to prepare to rediscover little springtimes in our lives.
At the beginning of the Gospel of St Matthew, when John the Baptist proclaims ‘Repent!’ he means: ‘Turn to God!’ Yes, during Lent, we wish to look towards God in order to receive forgiveness. Christ has conquered evil and his constant forgiveness allows us to renew an inner life. We are invited to a conversion: not to turn towards ourselves in introspection or individual perfectionism, but to seek communion with God and also communion with others.
Turning to God! It is true that in the Western world, it has become difficult for some people to believe in God. They see his existence as a limitation on their freedom. They think they must struggle alone to build their lives. That God walks alongside them seems inconceivable.
A year ago I visited our brothers who have been living in Korea for thirty years. On the way, another brother and I had youth meetings in several Asian countries. What struck me in Asia is that prayer seems natural. People belonging to different religions pray spontaneously in an attitude of respect, even adoration.
Of course, in those societies there are no fewer tensions or manifestations of violence than in the West. But a sense of interiority is perhaps more accessible, a respect for the miracle of life, for creation, a focus on mystery, on an afterlife.
How can we renew our interior life by discovering and rediscovering a personal relationship with God? In all of us there is a thirst for the infinite. God created us with this desire for an absolute. We must let this aspiration live in us!
Lent is a season that invites us to share. It leads us to sense that there is no spiritual growth without consenting to give something up, and to do so for love. Once when he was in the wilderness, Jesus, moved by compassion for those who followed him, multiplied five loaves and two fishes to feed everyone. What kind of sharing can we accomplish in our turn?
During this time of Lent let us dare to review our lifestyle, not to make those who do less feel guilty, but for the sake of solidarity with the deprived. The gospel encourages us to share freely while setting everything in the simple beauty of creation.
A MEDITATION BROTHER ALOIS
Scripture Reading
ST LUKE 9:12–17
‘All ate and were filled.’
Prayer
This Lent –
let your door stand open to receive Christ,
unlock your soul to him
offer him a welcome in your mind
and then you will see the riches of simplicity,
the treasures of peace,
and the joy of grace.
ST AMBROSE (ADAPTED)
For Reflection
Tom Wright was Bishop of Durham and is the author of many books on the New Testament, including (as N. T. Wright) the monumental works in the series Christian Origins and the Question of God.
Follow Me!
It is Jesus who is the Good Shepherd (St John 10). It is Jesus who has the task of leading and feeding his sheep and lambs, guiding them to and from pasture, keeping them safe from predators. He knows them and they know him. He has now given his life for them. But the commission of John 20:21 was quite specific. ‘As the Father sent me, so I’m sending you.’ There’s no getting away from it. And this is what it means. Peter is to share Jesus’ task of shepherding.
Here is the secret of all Christian ministry, yours and mine, lay and ordained, full-time or part-time. It’s the secret of everything from being a quiet, back-row member of a prayer group to being a platform speaker at huge rallies and conferences. If you are going to do any single solitary thing as a follower and servant of Jesus, this is what it’s built on. Somewhere deep down inside, there is a love for Jesus, and though (goodness knows) you’ve let him down enough times, he wants to find that love, to give you a chance to express it, to heal the hurts and failures of the past, and give you new work to do.
These are not things for you to do to ‘earn’ forgiveness. Nothing can ever do that. It is grace from start to finish. They are the things to do out of the joy and relief that you already are forgiven. Things that will be costly, because Jesus’ own work was utterly costly. Things that will mean following Jesus into suffering, perhaps into death. In the last week, as I have been writing this, more Christians have been killed around the world, simply for worshipping Jesus. ‘Someone else will dress you and take you where you would rather not go.’ Peter will complete his task as a shepherd by laying down his own life, in turn, for the sheep.
But even this is not something different from the call that drew the disciples in the first place. ‘Follow me!’ Now that Jesus has taken the steep road to the cross, and has proved that death itself is defeated by the life and joy of the new creation, he can ask for everything from those he has rescued, and know he will get it.
Peter went from strength to strength. He was still muddled from time to time, as Acts indicates. But he became a shepherd. He loved Jesus and looked after his sheep. No one could ask for more. Jesus never asks for less.
JOHN FOR EVERYONE TOM WRIGHT
Scripture Reading
ST JOHN 21:15–19
‘“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”’
Prayer
Good Shepherd,
as you laid down your life for me,
so may I lay down my life for you.
For Reflection
Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) became a practising member of the Church of England in 1921, the year when she published the first of her great books, Mysticism. She was widely sought after as a spiritual director and conductor of retreats.
Here Am I! Send Me!
Making our everyday actions harmonise with a spiritual outlook is not always easy. It means trying to see things, persons and choices from the angle of eternity: and dealing with them as part of the material in which the Spirit works. This will be decisive for the way we behave as to our personal, social and national obligations…
The prevalent notion that spirituality and politics have nothing to do with one another is the exact opposite of the truth. Once it is accepted in a realistic sense, the Spiritual Life has everything to do with politics. It means that certain convictions about God and the world become the moral and spiritual imperatives of our life; and this must be decisive for the way we choose to behave about that bit of the world over which we have been given a limited control.
Consider the story of the call of Isaiah. It is a story so well known that we easily take it for granted, and so fail to realise it as one of the most magnificent and significant in the world; for it shows us the awakening of a human being to his true situation over against Reality, and the true object of his fugitive life. There are three stages in it. First, the sudden disclosure of the Divine Splendour; the mysterious