PASTORAL LETTER
To be read at all services on the Sunday before Lent, 3rd February, 2008
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
As you will know, the date of Easter changes from year to year – this year (2008) Easter is particularly early which, of course, means that Lent is also early and although it feels that we have hardly recovered from Christmas, I am writing the customary Pastoral Letter calling you to an observance of this holy season.
Lent is a spiritual journey, but like all journeys we need to know where we are going, who will be our fellow travellers, and what we might expect to experience on the way. Well, Lent is a journey towards Easter, and Easter is not just another celebration or holiday, it is ‘the Feast of Feasts’.
As Christians, we have been baptised into the death and resurrection of Jesus. We have received this gift of new life and we have a life time in which to live it. The Easter message of the resurrection proclaims Christ has triumphed, even over death, and that radically changes our attitude towards life. The spiritual becomes what is most real and what will last for ever; everything else is temporary and will pass away. Easter is celebrated in our churches with the proclamation of the Easter message, and that is often accompanied by the blessing of the new light, the waters of baptism, the empty tomb in the Easter garden and Spring flowers. Mary mistook the risen Lord for the gardener, but in a way she was right. Jesus is the new Adam walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Easter brings about a new creation.
St Paul said, If then, you are risen with Christ, seek those things that are above..’ But so often after the liturgical celebrations in church, we go back to our daily routine with its worries and concerns so that the Easter message touches our senses but does not penetrate deeply into our hearts. It is easy to lose sight of the destination of our Christian journey or as people might say today ‘we lose the plot’. We go back to being our ‘old selves’ rather than being a ‘new creation’ and an Easter people.
From earliest times, the Church has observed Lent as an aid to bring us back on course – the Greek word for ‘repentance’ means to ‘turn around’. Lent is a time when we remember who we are – the baptised people of God – and rediscover what it means to be pilgrims on our journey to celebrate the ‘Feast of Feasts’. When we proclaim that, ‘This is the Passover of the Lord’, it is because Jesus has provided us with the passage into eternal life with God.
We cannot observe Lent unless our destination is Easter – that is the purpose of our journey together. Lent is not a time to be miserable, but a time to reflect and examine our lives – and to rediscover and recover who we are – an Easter people, a people of hope and a new creation.
Traditionally, there are four ways in which we observe Lent together – by extra prayer, through the study of the Scriptures, through fasting and almsgiving. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said When you give alms, do not announce it with a flourish of trumpets …No, when you give alms, do not let you right hand know what you left hand is doing; your good deed must be in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you…. Again, when you pray, go into a room by yourself, shut the door and pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees what is secret will reward you…. So too when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that people will not see that you are fasting, but only your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees what is secret will reward you.
The observance of Lent is a personal matter for each one of us, and I ask each one of you to consider carefully how you plan to observe this holy season. There can also be value in doing things together as a family. Some parishes will have Lent Bible study groups; some will have Lenten lunches or projects. Some will have extra services and time for quiet prayer.
Last year, I asked you to go without a meal on Ash Wednesday and on the Fridays in Lent and to let me have the money you saved for our link Diocese of The Highveld in South Africa. The response was magnificent and I want to thank you. I received about £25,000 from the parishes and over £10,000 from individual donations and that money has now been used to extend and endow feeding programmes to provide meals for malnourished children. I know that some people who have visited our link diocese since last Lent have told me that they have seen what our money has been able to do and the difference it has made to the lives of those children.
This year, once again, I am also asking you to forgo a meal on Ash Wednesday and on Fridays or to make some other act of personal sacrifice, and to let me have the money you have saved for a project in our link diocese. Bishop David Beetge, the Bishop of The Highveld tells me that they have an urgent need to develop training for laity and clergy and need a room (which they plan to call The Monmouth Room) with modern training equipment to be able to do this. I know that this may not have the same appeal as raising money for hungry children, but it is closely linked because the work carried out by the diocese in caring for the poor, the hungry, the homeless and those infected or affected by HIV and AIDS happens because the churches are growing, and they cannot grow without theological education and trained laity and clergy.
I therefore, ask you to be as generous as you were last year, and I am asking parishes to make arrangements to collect the money.
May God guide and protect you on the Lenten journey that you may experience the great joy of Easter and receive once again that gift of new life and know Christ’s abiding presence.
+ Dominic