Pastoral Message: Lent 1999

PASTORAL LETTER OF BISHOP CORMAC MURPHY-O'CONNOR

To be read at all Masses
on the Weekend of the first Sunday of Lent 1999

My dear Brothers and Sisters in Jesus Christ,

"If you are the son of God, throw yourself down from here" - so speaks the devil in todays gospel. This challenge was one of mockery and hate and is repeated at the crucifixion of Jesus. The leaders of the people jeered at him: "He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Messiah whom God has chosen". The soldiers also mocked him and said, "Save yourself if you are the King of the Jews".

Jesus our Lord, the Son of God, was crucified amid the jeers and mockery of the leaders and under the stares of the crowds. This hostile, irreverent and mocking spirit is still at large today in our society. So much that Jesus teaches us by his words and by his life is held up to ridicule and hostility. There is hostility to the family because chastity and integrity are ignored and derided. There is hostility to anything that takes away from the twin gods of money and consumerism. People are worn down by the many material goods which condition them. These material things bring licit satisfaction at first but gradually consume people and prevent any kind of austerity or interior strength.

Perhaps, above all, today's society or is it the devil? says to people that there is no other norm for behaviour but ones own feelings and desires. Yes, of course, ones own inner thoughts and feelings are important as one strives to follow ones conscience and the tradition of Christian teaching and love. But the aberration of our society occurs when people are encouraged to regard their own feelings as a kind of dictat - a norm which cannot be disregarded, or desires that cannot be questioned. Thus, commitments taken and promises made are broken when we say within ourselves, 'I do not feel up to it any more', or 'Faith and the reality of the Church no longer mean anything to me', or 'I cut myself off from that person because he or she no longer means anything to me'. Here is the heart of the frailty of our society and the crisis of the family. Here is the devilish deception in which people, convinced that they are finding themselves, lose themselves or, as Jesus puts it: "He who seeks his life will lose it".

How do we confront the hostility, the irreverence, the delusions of our society? How else but to turn to Jesus who is our model. More than this, we turn to him as our Saviour, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is never far away from us; He is very near to you: on your lips and in your heart and especially in this Mass when the priest offers you Holy Communion, saying, 'The Body and Blood of Christ'.

We are at the beginning of Lent. I am asking you today to save yourselves from too many interior questions. Abandon yourselves to the words and gestures of the Church to help you in your journey towards Easter. The Church echoes the words and example of its Saviour and exhorts us to do three things. First of all, prayer pray at home, pray at work especially pray the liturgy of the Church the Holy Eucharist. Jesus went away for 40 days he prayed night and day. Lent is a time for us to enter yet again into a life of prayer that is essential to our union with God.

Secondly, the Church exhorts us to do penance and fast. It does not mean so much a fasting from food but a fasting of the mind and the will and the heart. Look at the habits of your life, sometimes so driven by our consumer society. Examine how you can discipline yourself so as to attain a greater interior strength in order to follow the ways of Jesus Christ. What is it that you can do in your own personal life that will show you are truly free to choose the right path and thus follow the ways of a disciple of Christ? Like Jesus, we have to be able to say, "Be off, Satan. For Scripture says you must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone".

Finally, the Church exhorts us to look to those less fortunate than ourselves. Two years ago, as a Diocese, we promised that we would enter into a new Covenant with the Poor. We promised and I quote - that we would give more generously and substantially from our abundance of material goods to help the needy. And we also promised to bring to the Lord in our prayer and worship the brokenness of so many that He may show us ways to be instruments ofjustice, mercy and compassion and thus be a source of hope for all. This is all summed up in today's opening prayer, 'Father, through our observance of Lent, help us to understand the meaning of your Sons death and resurrection and teach us to reflect it in our lives'.

May God bless you all.

Yours devotedly in Christ, Rt. Rev. Cormac Murphy-O'Connor Bishop of Arundel and Brighton.