...all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man
shall be accomplished. For He shall be
delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and
spitted on: and they shall scourge Him, and put Him to death.
The Gospel reading from St. Luke
appointed for today, Quinquagesima, the last Sunday before the season of Lent
begins, gives us a timely reminder of how that blessed season ends. Jesus Christ dying for us upon the Cross. I use that word, blessed, with deliberation and care, recognising that to some it
may seem a strange description of what is supposed to be a deeply penitential
time of the year.
It is the very opportunity provided
by
Lent is blessed because if we use it
properly, and allow all the meaning of it to touch us in our very core, it can
only bring us closer to Jesus Christ, now in this world and in the next. It is a season in which we can and should
open our hearts to the healing action of the Holy Spirit, take hold of the hand
of Jesus Christ and let Him lead us onward.
Near
That is not a cry of despair, but an
acknowledgment of a fundamental truth and a cry of hope. We are powerless against our fallen nature,
but in Jesus Christ is our hope. Look at
what happens to the blind man – Jesus
said unto him, Receive thy sight; thy faith hath saved thee. And immediately he received his sight.
Jesus is always ready to dispense
His mercy, far more ready than we are to ask for it. God is Love, love expressed in countless acts
of mercy towards His fallen creatures.
What more reason could we need than to enter into Lent in the right
spirit, looking always towards that ultimate expression of God’s Love – His
beloved Son nailed to the Cross.
We all need to lay our sins at the
foot of that Cross and open our hearts to the Love which pours from it, and it must
be done in that order. First the genuine
bringing of our sins to God, with broken and contrite hearts; then the opening
of those hearts to the Love of God for full spiritual healing through the mercy
of God.
No one can live as a Christian
without first opening his heart to the Love of God.
The best definition of it that I
have found is by the Rt. Rev. J.R. Woodford, a 19th Century English
Bishop. Writing in the Commentary on The
New Testament, published in 1905 by the SPCK, he says, By charity then is meant, “the love with which the Christian loves
God.” This love is a grace divinely
infused into the soul, of which the Holy Ghost is the Giver.
We make room in our hearts for the
Holy Ghost by placing our sins at the foot of the Cross, and even that we
cannot do unless the Holy Ghost first moves us to do so. Bishop Woodford directs us to 1John
Today sees a relatively rare event
in the Church calendar, the coinciding of Quinquagesima with St. Valentines
Day. The former, as I hope I have made
clear, is a very serious day for the Christian Church. The latter should also be a serious day
because the two St. Valentines were indeed real Christians, both martyred for
their faith. One, according to the
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, was a Roman priest, martyred on the
The point is that he was, or they
were, genuine Christians who remained faithful even unto death. How sad it is that their memory has been
sullied by the modern version of St. Valentine’s Day, in which commerce seeks
to extract money from the gullible to enrich itself. I am happy to say that my wife and I agreed
long ago that we would ignore the slushiness of the day and she does not expect
flowers, chocolates and expensive cards.
Enriching the greedy is hardly an appropriate way to commemorate
martyrdom.
Bishop Carl kindly forwarded to me a
sermon delivered by the late Bp. John Cahoon, then acting Metropolitan and
Bishop Ordinary of the Dioceses of the Mid Atlantic States. It was preached on
After saying that, Thanks to greeting card and perfume
salesmen, and bed and breakfast proprietors, and the natural guiltiness of the
male of our species, Valentine’s day is the day we set aside to exalt romantic
love, Bishop Cahoon goes on to make an extremely damning statement:
One of the clearest signs of the degeneracy of our epoch of history is
that almost all modern translations of the New Testament use “love” as the
translation of the word in today’s epistle which the King James Version renders
as “charity”. Charity and romantic love
are not the same thing.
Indeed they are not. Charity arises from the Holy Ghost, the
giver. It is “the love with which the Christian loves God”, and as such it does
not allow for anything but the most impeccable behaviour towards others, or as
Bishop Cahoon preached, To show charity
is to act for the good of another person no matter what it may cost us.
After pointing out that chapter 13
of St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians has become a sort of all-purpose
scriptural reading on all sorts of occasions, because people think it sounds so sentimental and non-judgmental, Bishop Cahoon goes on to say later, To paraphrase St. Paul: a person who has
charity puts up with everything and everybody in a kind and generous spirit; he
never wants what he doesn’t have already; he doesn’t put himself forward or
brag; he doesn’t keep a list of slights; he takes no salacious interest in the
wrongdoings of others.
The Bishop ends that paragraph with
a thought which we would do well to retain through the coming Lent, If that is the standard by which God
measures our behaviour, we are all in big trouble. How true, and what a warning that is that we
all have much to repent in the Penitential Season.
...all
things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be
accomplished. For He shall be delivered
unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted
on: and they shall scourge Him, and put Him to death. Jesus Christ was not by any stretch of the
imagination treated with charity. Just
the opposite. Just as He is the standard
to which we should aspire, His treatment by His fellow men is the standard by
which we should absolutely not behave.
On the other hand, it is a standard which, for the sake of Jesus Christ,
we should be prepared to allow others to treat us, just as St. Valentine did.
It was Jews who delivered Jesus to
be killed. It was Gentiles who killed
Him in the most cruel and horrible manner.
It is for all, Jew and Gentile alike, that those arms are stretched out
on the wood of the Cross. It is that
Love which allows us to love Him and gives us all the reason we can ever need
to do so.
So as we come now to the Holy
Eucharist, to our participation in that one, perfect and perpetual sacrifice;
as we approach the Holy Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood without which He
says there will be no life in us, let us remember something now and throughout
the coming season of Lent.
Let us remember that these Holy
Mysteries are pledges of His Love for us and that through them the way is
opened for us to love Him. Indeed,
despite our inadequacies before God, we cannot meetly partake of His precious
Body and Blood unless we do love Him.
Lent is our opportunity to grow in that love by seeking the help of the
Holy Spirit to cleanse us from sin.
As the collect for purity says, and
I truly hope you follow this collect with serious attention, Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the
inspiration of thy Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love thee....
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have
mercy upon us and grant us all a Holy Lent.
Give us the grace of broken and contrite hearts and make us worthy of
your precious Body and Blood.
Peter Jardine+
Quinquagesima,