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Welcome to St Mary's the Virgin
I was at a clerical gathering on evening last week. One of the speakers remarked that if we all stayed until midnight, we would be together to celebrate being exactly half way through Lent. Blessedly this did not bring forth a spontaneous rendition of Bon Jovi’s ‘Living on a Prayer’* and nice though the restaurant we were in was, neither was there a groundswell of opinion that it would be fun to make it a late-nighter, despite the evident fact that almost none of the clergy who had gathered seemed to be recognising the season by abstaining from wine.
I have to confess I have not been counting the days until the great day that marks the beginning of our faith, but while we are on numbering days, I will clear up a question I have been asked a number of times in recent weeks. The answer is No, technically, Sundays do not count. With the Sundays taken as Lenten, the season would be forty-six days, not forty, and, as you know, we mark the forty days and nights of Jesus’ fasting in the wilderness. This is not simply a matter of parsonical bean-counting; every Sunday throughout the year counts as a feast day, though we don’t often remember this. That is not to say it is not a very meet, right and good thing to do to keep your Lenten discipline on Sundays as well, but if it will genuinely help your rejoicing in the Lord always, on a Sunday you can relax a little.
Gentle readers, you will have lost count I am sure, of how often I have told you that ‘Lent’ in old Middle English was the word for Spring. It is the season where we see the world around us waking up and growing again, with longer, brighter, warmer days. If you find five minutes, it is worth counting the days left of Lent, including Sundays or not and thinking of something to do on each of them to be in brighter, warmer, deeper touch with the Creator of Spring and Conqueror of death who is the Lord who loves you. He didn’t come half-way to meet you - he came the whole way and more: surely a thing to rejoice in.
Fr. Neil
*the chorus of the song begins “Oh-oh, we’re halfway there; Woh-oh – living on a prayer…” and is sung by England cricket fans whenever the national side reach half of the required runs total to win a match. To be fair the current side have been really quite good at achieving this.
