Dear Friends
When I told my wife that I was going to write the Church letter in February’s magazine, she said, “Great! It can be about St Valentine!” I have to say, I was less sure, and on checking Wikipedia I realised that her suggestion was easier said than done!
St Valentine is thought to have been the Bishop of Terni in Italy in the 3rd century. He was martyred on 14th February, the same day as the pagan festival of Lupercalia. It is the day on which birds are thought to start pairing up each year. Ever since then, Valentine has been regarded as the patron saint of bee-keepers and epilepsy as well as of young lovers. Well, after all, “Life” is all about the birds and the bees.
But Valentine is just one of the six martyrs who are commemorated among the fourteen saints celebrated in February according to the Church calendar. That is, on average, one every other day during this the shortest month of the year. For most of us they are quite obscure figures, like Polycarp of Smyrna, Blasius of Sebastopol or Agatha of Sicily, but there is one whom many of us may remember, Bishop Janani Luwum of Uganda, who was killed on the orders of Idi Amin in February 1977.
People such as these provide examples for us “of the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of Christian men and women down the ages”. In this way their life stories can “excite” us to holiness, reminding us of “that great cloud of witness” to the love of God that surround us in time and space, geographically and through history.
Be that as it may, although I love my wife’s suggestion for this month’s letter, I know that I am really meant to be writing about Lent, the 40 day season before Holy Week, that leads us to Easter.
Easter is on 5th April this year, so Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, the 18th February. This is when our time of preparation traditionally starts. During Lent we might embrace some new spiritual discipline, be more deliberate in our prayer time or bible study, or we might simply try to live less selfishly in our everyday habits or be kinder, more thoughtful and caring for those with whom we live. During these 40 days of Lent, we can remind ourselves of Jesus’s abstinence during his time in the wilderness. Or, particularly later in Lent, we might reflect on Jesus’s courage in confronting evil or his extraordinary obedience to God’s will, and how he embodied God’s love for us on the cross, giving us a way by which we can find God’s forgiveness for ourselves and for our failings and weaknesses. Just as, on Good Friday, Jesus expressed God’s love for us on the cross, during Lent we can try to better express our love for him through the way we live alongside our neighbours.
Doing this won’t make us saints or even martyrs in the way it made those whose names will be celebrated on their special days in February. But if our efforts or our abstinence can bring us and the rest of this turbulent and tragic world just one tiny bit closer to being more fully God’s kingdom, we shall have had a good Lent.
May you know God’s blessings this month.
Robin
(The Reverend Robin Alderson)