Dear Friends,

As this edition of ‘In the Word’ goes out, we are preparing to enter the Season of Lent next week. Once again, it feels like were just enjoying the Christmas season, and here we are already preparing for Easter.

The Church’s liturgical seasons are a real gift to us, helping us to enter into and make present the key events in the life of Christ, which happened more than 2000 years ago, but still bring fresh meaning to our lives today.

I must confess that among the liturgical seasons I have a fondness for good old Ordinary Time, where we get to slowly but surely immerse ourselves in the day-to-day happenings, extraordinary though they were, of Jesus’ ministry.

Advent is a beautiful time of reflection before Christmas, and Easter is a season full of joy and new life, but Lent, well Lent always seems a bit daunting, with its emphasis on fasting, denial and the journey towards Calvary on Good Friday.

As I get older though, I appreciate Lent more and more. I appreciate its call to strip away some of those things in my life which prevent me from keeping my gaze on Jesus. I also appreciate the invitation to take on board some extra spiritual reading or reflection and yes, even the discipline of forgoing some of the treats I normally enjoy. There is an invitation to go deeper in Lent as we prepare ourselves for the joy of Easter. And in this frenetic world, with its 24-hour connectivity, increasingly polarised social rhetoric, and general pervading sense of exhaustion, who doesn’t want to tune out of some of that and go deeper, into the quiet, cool depths of our inner life in Christ?

Of course, Lent is also about reaching out to others. Almsgiving is a traditional Lenten activity, but there are also opportunities to look around us and see the needs of the people we encounter, and respond as best we can.

May this Lent be a time of both going deeper in faith and reaching out in love.

Yours in the Word,

Fr Asaeli Rass SVD,
Provincial.