Lent

So Lent has begun. Are you already finding your resolutions difficult to keep? Will you really be able to go six whole weeks without chocolate, cigarettes, crisps or whatever? Are you already thinking about moderating your chosen ‘fast’? Perhaps the problem lies not so much in lack of will-power but in forgetting that these six weeks of penance are communal and shared.
Back in the 1960s, at the Second Vatican Council, the bishops coined an important phrase about the nature of the Church: it was ‘semper reformanda’ - always in need of reform. This was a very bold statement to make because it outlined the need for the Church to be called back again and again to its fundamental task and mission. It implied not just that individuals could wander off and stray but that the institution itself could lose could need correction and reform.
And that’s something we need to grasp. We are not just engaging in penance because of our own sins and failings but because we as a body have failed to live up to our calling to be the Body of Christ. Look around you at the people at Mass this weekend. Most of them are doing some small ‘fasts’ just like you. We are not alone, but part of a community that is trying to learn what it is to be Christian. We are at different parts of the journey but the entire Body needs us all to ‘repent’ in we are to be the effective sign of Jesus in 2004. P.D.