Lent is upon us, how exciting! It is really something one ought to look forward to — all the penance and sacrifice yes, but not to look forward to those things because we are Jansenists (some of my closest friends are of course, a much-misunderstood heresy) or because we are odd people who enjoy suffering, but rather because it is an opportunity to return to essentials. It is this marvellous opportunity to return with all our heart to Our Lord Jesus Christ and through our little efforts to know him more clearly, love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly.

The Lenten penances we give ourselves have to have that in mind; and they really ought to be things which are designed to make us really realise each day of Lent that we are doing whatever we are doing (or not, as the case may be) because we want to do something for God, and for our life with him. The obvious thing is to give up little luxuries or what might really be, or what we are told we must consider to be, vices. Here we have to be circumspect and honest — are we giving up sweets and cigarettes because it will bring us closer to Christ, or because we want to be thin and have more money in the bank? Will foregoing a glass of wine really help us to root out sin, or will it just make us a bore at dinner parties? Whatever sacrifices we make, and we must make some — sacrifice is the only real test of our love — we have to do it with him at the heart of it. Recent popes have all spoken of this, suggesting instead we give up wasting time on screens (not right now, you have to read to the end of this) so we can give more time to prayer, stop gossiping so people can trust us again, stop complaining and give way instead to compassion, gentleness, and kindness. It is an old mistake to think holiness consists in non-sinning or not doing ‘bad things’ rather than also making efforts, real efforts, to grow in virtue.

We are told very often in this period that Lent is an opportunity to go out into the desert; that is to join Christ in the desert when he was thrown there by the Holy Spirit after his baptism to be tempted and tried and so to give us a model of our own penance and spiritual warfare. What does that look like really? A friend of mine (decidedly not one of the Jansenist ones) always took this literally, and spent a week of Lent at a luxury resort in Sharm El Sheikh. For him that was getting away: from phone calls, e-mails, all the noise that surrounds us. We can’t all do that, or particularly want to I suppose, but we must use Lent as that opportunity for silence and quiet, just to give the Lord a little more opportunity to speak to us and call us back to him. We have to work; we can’t always disappear off on a retreat, but that is why Christ reminds us that we are in the world, but not of it. We do not always have to have our phone superglued to our hands or know everything that is going on in the world. Perhaps it is simply an opportunity to discover the ‘off’ button on our devices, no matter how terrifying that might be. There’s a sign one sees occasionally in churches reminding people to turn off their phone — because God does want to speak to you, but he’s unlike to do so through a telephone.

And when we do turn if off — well what do we do then? Suddenly there are all these little gaps in the day. Well then we give God a chance to get through to us; we can pray; we can read that spiritual book we’ve always put off and let God encourage us; we can rediscover what it is all about. And we can do things to help him give us that good shake we need in Lent to get back on that narrow path.

Here at the Oratory there is ample opportunity to meet him: in the Mass, in the confessional, at Adoration, walking with him along the Stations of the Cross, or simply coming into church rather than rushing by. Others help us too of course and we have Men’s Oratory, Women’s Oratory, Young Adults, and Secular Oratory too. We will have our Lenten Talks on Saturday mornings, drawing inspiration and encouragement from ‘Saints for Sinners’ with an array of guest speakers. Which of those will you come to?

Festina lente — hasten slowly. Whatever we do with this Lent we must remember not to rush into grand gestures that collapse by the Second Sunday, leaving us discouraged. Our penances must be costly but not unrealistic. For some of us there will be quite enough crosses already and Lent will be about how we carry them, how we persevere, more than anything else.

Come Holy Saturday the light will shine in the darkness and the whole point of anything in Lent is that when he steps out of the tomb we might recognise him that little bit more.

The sermon preached at the Mass of Baptism, Reception and Confirmation on Saturday. The readings were 1 Kings 3:4–13 and Mark 6:30–34.

If this is your first time in a Catholic Church, you are very welcome! And even if it’s not, this may be the first time you have ever heard that first passage of scripture that we’ve just read. And if it is your first time hearing that prayer of King Solomon, you’d be forgiven if you didn’t quite follow it. Because our first reading — taken out of context as it seems to be — appears to be saying something we do not believe at all, and it’s easy to see why the Christian faith is so often misunderstood.

Solomon is only the third king of Israel, famous for his wisdom, and this reading is his “origin story.” This is the story of where that wisdom came from. Solomon is speaking to God about his father, the famous King David. And Solomon says to the Lord: “You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant David my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart towards you.”

In other words, Solomon says to God: “You loved my father because he was good and he deserved it.” That’s the problem with taking things out of context, because if you were to flick back a few pages in your Bible and read the story of David, you will see that that’s only half true. David’s life is a constant story of: God does something for David; David forgets that and then does something bad; God tells David off; David repents and is forgiven; and then the whole cycle starts again. One of David’s most famous prayers is the Psalm that he wrote begging for mercy, after he’d had an affair with another man’s wife, and then murdered the man to try to cover up his sin. David is not a perfect person. The point is: God did not love David because David was good. David became good (eventually!) because God first loved him. It was that constant love and mercy and forgiveness that God showed to David that changed him.

And that can be hard to grasp. It is somewhat difficult to understand what it means for God to love all of us in that same way; to understand his mercy and forgiveness, to imagine what that kind of compassion looks like in God. We can’t get “inside” his mind to understand his feelings or emotions, because in himself, God is not like us.

But so that we can begin to understand him, so that he can become even more approachable to us, God becomes one of us.

And it’s exactly that same kind of love and compassion that we see in action in our Gospel reading. The Apostles have just returned from their first solo preaching mission. They must have been exhausted from all of the walking — never mind all the people they had been helping, preaching to, healing, and working miracles for. Jesus himself had just heard that his cousin has been arrested and executed, so he must have been tired and emotional as well. But so many people have now heard about all the extraordinary things happening that they won’t leave Jesus — or even his disciples — alone, so that they don’t have time to eat, to sleep and to rest.

So first, Christ has compassion on his disciples: he tries to give them a break. They get into a boat to go somewhere quiet; they hope that no one will find them, so that at least for a few hours they can rest and recover. And there’s something quite comical in the crowd’s reaction: the way that you can imagine someone saying, “I know where they’re going,” and a mad chase takes place of everyone following them and in fact getting there before them. It’s not written down, but you can imagine that the disciples groaned as the boat reached the land, and they said, “What are these people doing here? I thought we were finally going to have a chance to eat something!”

They get out of the boat. And no matter what they’re feeling, Christ now has compassion on the crowds as well. “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

Not: “He loved them because they were all perfect already.” They needed him, and he felt sorry for them.

In fact that word we have here as “compassion” is one of the most fantastic words in the Bible, and “compassion” hardly does it real justice. He felt “gutted” for them. It’s not just an emotion of the head, but it describes almost a physical reaction to their need. When he saw how much they need him, it was like someone punched him in the stomach. That is the compassion, the love, that God feels for us.

And so he put aside the needs of his disciples, and even his own needs, and he sat down to teach them, even though he must have been physically and mentally exhausted.

This is the message of the Gospel: not that God loves those who are good, but that he holds back nothing to help those who need him. He helps them to find him, to know him, to be helped and healed and to be made good by his divine power.

For the first crowds, that was a process that began with a physical encounter. What we experience today in receiving the sacraments is the continuation of that same compassion. Here Christ doesn’t just teach us, but he gives himself to us unreservedly. He didn’t claim time or space for rest back then; he holds nothing back when he gives himself to us in Holy Communion. This Gospel illustrates to us that there is action on his part. He is not a passive or an unwilling participant in our encounter with him. He is moved by our need and he wants to give himself to us. Not because any of us is good or worthy, but because he sees how much we need him.

It has been said that generosity is the keynote of our religion. Christ himself is the prime example of this, since in loving us, “he gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering” (Eph. 5:2) to the Father. It is his example that we are called to imitate in our total self-offering. The Psalmist is our guide here, when he writes: “I will offer unto thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and call upon the name of the Lord” (Ps. 115:8), and the same sentiment is given in the Letter to the Hebrews where we read: “Through Jesus Christ let us continually offer up to God the sacrifice of praise, that is the tribute of our lips which acknowledges his name.” (13:15) This principally concerns our prayer, vocal and liturgical, but it equally applies to our silent or mental prayer, which Evelyn Underhill describes in her study Worship as a “speechless self-offering, a total oblation of personality” and she uses the image of the burnt offering to express the total self-loss of the creature in the Father, which is the end of worship: union with God. “He must increase, I must decrease.” (Jn 3:30) John the Baptist points the way.

Of course, our offering of prayer is a part, a vital part, of our offering of ourselves, and we do not make it alone. It is always made effective because offered “through Jesus”. And in union with his Body, the Church, we are enabled to make it, not through our own strength, but through the action of the Holy Spirit. Thus the offering is indeed ours, but it is a real response to grace, freely and gladly given.

I recall reading somewhere once, a very helpful insight, which is that if we see prayer quite simply as an offering, we shall be relieved by any anxiety to make prayer “successful”. Offerings simply have to be made. It doesn’t do any good to fret about whether or not my prayer is doing any good or having any effect — any more than caring if the recipient of a gift will make good use of it. Naturally, for example, we should hope that any birthday money we might give to a grandchild would be properly spent, but does it help to ask her persistently how she did so? An offering is simply to be made and a gift given, without strings and conditions. 

Our prayers are often, perhaps even mostly, imperfectly framed and said without much feeling of sensible devotion, but nevertheless, we make them and offer them, as broken and unsatisfactory as they may seem. Yet, if we can make them gladly and lovingly, they are accepted and treasured in a manner beyond our comprehension. It is true that God loves a cheerful giver, which means far more than money and almsgiving, but the total self-offering of our lives. There are days when the last thing we feel like doing is praising God, but still, we do it. The offering is there and the Lord is surely well pleased.