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From the Vicar

Dear Friends,

Happy Lent! (I don't think that is a contradiction in terms!) I hope you are all keeping well and looking forward? On this website are both this week's Cross and Crown, and the Order of Service for Lent. The Order of Service will be the same for at least the next four weeks up to and including Mothering Sunday on the 14th of March, and it might well be the same all the way to Palm Sunday on the 28th, depending on how keen I'm feeling! There is definitely change in the air: the days are getting longer; vaccines are being distributed; and on Monday we will hopefully hear more about how Lockdown might slowly be lifted.

Lent, too, is an opportunity for change: we are given the chance to change old habits and old mind-sets; to free ourselves from all those things that keep us tied to this world. Penitence - saying sorry - is really an opportunity for us to look up and look out: an opportunity for us to recognise that this world is not eternal, and is not how God intends it to be. Things will not stay as they are forever. Change is coming, and we have a chance to live that change: to let it (Him) into our hearts and minds. When we "confess" our sins, what we are really doing is admitting our sinfulness, and also admitting - confessing - our faith and trust in God's power and mercy. We try to stop our instinct to hide from him (as Adam and Eve hid in the story of Eden), and bring all of who we are into the light, into God's truth, so that He can judge us, and change us to become the children He yearns for us to be. I hope and pray that this Lent gives you the chance to do that: as St Paul says in his second letter to the Corinthians, "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation".

With love and prayers

Fr Bernard

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