“The painter’s brush touched the inchoate face by ends of nimble bristles and, with that blush of first colour, rendered her lifeless cheek living.” So run the first lines of a relatively unknown poem. But there is truth in these words — by daubs of paint, even the most naive movement, emotion and life can be conjured. We’ve been thinking a lot about this as the layers of modern paint in our church’s sanctuary have been peeled away by the extraordinary skill of the team from Cliveden Conservation. Some came away easily, some by the painstaking application of a scalpel. Some cracks needed filling and re-colouring, some gilding needed a new touch of gold leaf and one whole section had to be repainted from fragmentary evidence. It was a labour of love, a slow and at times anxious process. The results speak for themselves.

Four roundels are framed by scrolling leaves and gilt flowers, each telling the story of a scene from our patron saint’s life. His first Holy Communion at the hands of St Charles Borromeo, the renunciation of his father’s wealth, his profession in the Society of Jesus and finally his all too early death. He is not alone in these scenes, those others — saints, parents, confreres — who played their part on Aloysius’ journey to sanctity are depicted too. There is an elegance and a simplicity to Gabriel Pippet’s work in the forms and shapes and the colours he chose. A fitting tribute to a life lived for God and others.

It makes one think. If my life were to be depicted in four or so scenes, either in the mind of others or on a church wall, which would be the defining moments? Perhaps we cannot choose, perhaps there are some which would make us blush to remember them, perhaps others are painful and challenging. We are all on a path to sainthood. In the last analysis our life will be weighed in that balance that only God, the just judge of our life, has an eye on. In the present we, by his grace, have the chance to form those crucial scenes. The choices we make now are always formative.

“You are God’s work of art,” St Paul writes to the Ephesians. We are a work in progress, perfected and helped along by the love and the mercy of our God who takes a keen and loving interest in our life. There is a process of restoration going on in us too — sometimes easy, sometimes by the painstaking application of a scalpel of repentance. Elsewhere, St Paul exhorts his readers to fill their minds with that which is “true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise.” St Aloysius, in his short life, sought these things with an intrepid and uncompromising zeal and put them to the service of others. This was his path to conversion, fulfilled in that final scene of our murals in which he spoke of going to heaven, “as if it were a walk out to Tivoli.” The time to seek heaven is now.

Conversion has been much on the minds of many of us during Lent. By our prayers and our sacrifices we seek to draw closer to the Lord, to rely more on him, to seek his help more. As we move into Passiontide, the reality of his sacrifice of love should dawn a little more clearly on our minds. That loveable saviour was cruelly treated, disfigured, beaten and killed on account of our sins, but the love that was at the heart of his sacrifice was also on account of our sins since he knows his love saves us from them. Our image may at times resemble him in his disfigured state, but as we dispose our selves more and more to the action of his grace, we will resemble him more and more in his risen glory. That heavenly glory has to be the guiding inspiration behind all the scenes that form the artwork of our lives.

The Church requires all priests to make a spiritual retreat each year — a week away from pastoral work to give some attention to their own spiritual lives, to pray and to rest. Christ took the disciples away from their public ministry to rest (Mark 6:31), and often escaped himself to be alone with his Father (e.g. Matt. 14:23, Mark 1:35).

A week-long retreat in a monastery will not be possible for those who have work, studies or families to take care of. But the busier we are, the more essential it is that we take time in the course of the year to give our relationship with God some more than ordinary attention. In many ways, the Church builds this time into the year for us, by encouraging us not just to attend Mass on Sundays and major feast days, but also to rest from our usual activity on those days and devote the time we save to extra prayer, study and works of charity.

In the fourth century, when the Roman Empire became Christian, the emperors suspended all law courts and businesses from functioning during Holy Week so that all the faithful would be free to spend the week in church. That practice continued in Christian countries even into the nineteenth century. All Christians were given time off to devote the whole week leading up to Easter to more intense spiritual activity.

Lent is a time of preparation for Easter. That preparation takes the form not only of prayer, fasting and almsgiving but also of planning. Without a plan, Holy Week and Easter may pass us by like any other ordinary days. The thought of Easter rapidly approaching should remind us to make some more practical plans for the Sacred Triduum. The full schedule for the liturgies and other devotions taking place that week in church is now available on our website. Do we know what time we will spend in church? Do we know what else we will do in those days? Will we make sure in advance that the house is clean, the shopping is bought and the laundry is done so that we are free to focus on God during those days that he was so especially focused on us and our salvation?

Fr Walter Ciszek, in his book He Leadeth Me, speaks of the retreats he organised for his fellow prisoners in a Soviet prison camp. They managed to spend their days in prayer without any break from their work in some of the toughest conditions human beings have ever faced. Fr Ciszek and his fellow priests made this possible by the rigorous planning they put in ahead of each period of retreat, in order to make the most of the little time they had available to them. It is possible for all of us to grow in our love of God — but we need to plan how we are going to do it.

We are not quite half-way through Lent, the penitential season, and by now it is not unusual to hear the complaint: “I’ve broken every one of my resolutions.” If that is the case, never mind, just pick up where you left off and start off all over again. It’s the intention that counts.

Naturally, we want to do as well as we can, to be as perfect as can be. However, experience shows us that we are a long way off perfection. But will eating a biscuit in Lent really bar us from Heaven? Of course not. But that is not why we make those Lenten sacrifices — or because eating or drinking less may be good for us for health reasons. We do so because we are disciples of Christ and are seeking to learn from his teaching and to imitate his example.

On the First Sunday of Lent, we read, as we do every year, the account of the Temptation of the Lord in the desert. This year, we heard Mark’s somewhat pared back version of the incident, mentioned, it almost seems, as if in passing. But our minds went back, I’m sure, to the fuller stories in Luke and Matthew’s Gospels, which tell us how Jesus was tempted. It’s not necessary to rehearse them here. All that is necessary is to recall that he was tempted. We learn from his example how to deal with those temptations, and to learn that it is essential and indeed possible to say say “No” to ourselves and not simply to give in to our every whim and desire.

If we have an uncontrolled habit of snacking between meals, or spending hours on social media or endlessly checking our mobile phones, or pouring ourselves a drink (just the one?), we may find ourselves enslaved, unable, or so we think, to free ourselves from whatever addiction it is we are subject to. Lent is a good time to seek our freedom again, and to re-evaluate our relationship with our phones, with food and drink, or Ebay and Amazon. It can be a struggle, and present a real test of our love for God and our self-control. God allows us to be tested not because he does not know how strong we are, but because we do not know. We are all of us tested, tried, by the stresses and pains of life, by the burdens others lay on us, by the ceaseless challenge to respond with love to those whom we find difficult to love. When we succeed in overcoming this or that temptation, we are doing so in his strength, not ours. When we suffer some temptation, we must see it as an opportunity to grow, in holiness and in virtue. Only when we are tempted do we have the chance to triumph. When we choose to try to resist temptation, standing firm, having recourse to the grace of the Sacraments, then every temptation becomes an occasion of virtue.

Every temptation is an opportunity — to be faithful or not. The saintly Curé of Ars, John Vianney, told someone who was struggling with some temptation to imagine Our Lord standing beside him, neither judging nor condemning him as he struggled, but saying, “Ah, so you do love me.” There can be no virtue without temptation. “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” (I Cor. 10:13) As we continue our Lenten journey, let’s keep in mind that in our weakness, the Lord will show himself to be strong and will hear our prayer “lead us not into temptation.”

The prayer of surrender which many use each day, can be a great help: O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything. A simple enough prayer to make. Worth trying.