Septuagesima, roughly seventy days
before Easter, or three weeks before the start of Lent, reminds us that in the
Church names and time are important things: they are used to divide and to
mark, to draw our attention to things. Historically, the countdown to Lent is a
chance to change our focus, with Candlemas our celebration of Christmas drew to
a close, and we began to look to the Cross, to Our Lord and Saviour’s Passion.
So we begin the countdown to our Lenten observance of prayer and fasting, we
begin to get ready to prepare for the most solemn part of the Christian Year:
Holy Week and Easter. It’s the Church’s equivalent of an advanced warning – we need
to be on the lookout, we need to be prepared, rather like dealing with the
current spate of bad weather and power cuts.
What we do and how we
do it are important things, and they matter – there are times when we make the
sign of the Cross, when the names of the Trinity, the Father, The Son, and the
Holy Spirit are mentioned, we bow our heads at the name of Jesus, and we bow or
genuflect to altars and aumbries, from which we are fed with the Body and Blood
of Christ to honour the God who loves us and who saves us. Many of us may have
received flowers or other tokens of affection this week – they demonstrate in a
physical way the feelings which we have inside. The church’s ritual is just
like this – it enacts what it represents and allows us to make a physical
demonstration of the faith which we have inside us. The gestures are not empty;
rather they are full of meaning, and full of faith.
What we say, and what
we do matter. For a start being a Christian isn’t something we just do for an
hour on a Sunday morning, without any connection to the other 167 hours in a
week. We enter the Church through baptism, and through prayer and the
sacraments, being fed with the Word of God and His Body and Blood, we can be
transformed to be like the one who saves us, and who loves us. It doesn’t cost
us any money, it’s free, it’s all gift – the grace of God, poured out on us, on
you and me, to heal us and to restore us. You’d be a fool to turn this down,
wouldn’t you?
It is free, but with it
there comes a commitment: a commitment to Christ and His Church, to living our
lives in a way which is recognisably Christ-like. This morning’s Gospel tells
us that we need to be careful – even the words which we use matter. To be a part
of the Christian community has as its basis and starting point reconciliation:
reconciliation to God and each other – we need to confess our sins, our faults,
and our failings to God, and using the ministry of a priest. It isn’t something
which we should leave to the secular courts, or the law of the land, because
what is at stake is the state of our souls and our relationship with Christ and
with His Body, the Church.
All of our life
matters, even the smallest thing, even a glance. It matters because we are what
we do, and what we do helps to form our moral character – we get used to it, it
becomes normal and instinctive, it is how we put our faith into practice in our
lives. It’s not easy, it’s difficult, and I’m not standing here as a moral super-hero
telling people off, but rather as a sinner redeemed by God’s love and mercy,
who knows that it’s something which we cannot do alone, we need God, and we
need each other – it’s a community effort, and through God’s mercy, and our
prayer and support we can be built as living stones as a temple to God’s glory.
We can do it together, we are doing it, but we need to keep on trying, together
– living simple, transparent lives, letting our ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and our ‘No’ be ‘No’,
so that the whole of our lives together proclaims the faith of our hearts, that
we are set free to live the life of the Kingdom here and now, that we are
prepared to keep renewing our commitment to God and each other, so that the
world around us may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed, as is most right and just, all might,
majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
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