Well we’re almost a week into Lent. Think back to the gospel for Ash Wednesday: the good deeds we do for Lent are not to be paraded before others. If we do this we have had our reward since others know the good we have been doing.

In recent years I have been invited to lead sessions for the parents of children preparing for First Communion local parishes. I love working with these parents. Many have had little contact with Sunday worship for a decade or two or more. Yet their growing faith leads them to ask for a Sacrament of the Church. While our (church) response is always well-intentioned it’s usually pretty unhelpful when it focusses on Mass attendance and parish activity as the ultimate and immediate measure of faith.

I’m writing this reflection at Wellington airport after a day with an inspiring group, reflecting together on Pope Francis’ liturgy letter Desiderio Desideravi published in June of last year. It’s my role with the National Liturgy Office that leads me, along with the NLO co-director Catherine Gibbs, to offer these formation sessions across the country.

Fasting has become fashionable.

While many religions promote fasting as a hard but necessary practice, fasting has never really taken off as an attractive and life-giving movement. Until now maybe?

Yesterday morning I was at Nazareth House, a Christchurch retirement community, for Ash Wednesday Mass. This Wednesday Mass is a weekly appointment for me and I look forward to it and the conversations with the residents before and after Mass.

While the visible and external world of healthy religion is inspiring, a maturing faith requires an openness to the inner life. The external practices and precepts of religion are signs that point us towards a deeper reality, a world where integrity is found, becoming ourselves in relationship with the divine.

Today, the day before Ash Wednesday, is commonly known as  ‘shrove‘ or ‘pancake’ Tuesday.

This day is more widely known in many parts of the world as Mardi Gras (ie fat Tuesday), or ‘Carnival‘ (literally ‘goodbye meat’). These celebrations began years ago when the fasting really was tough: 40 days without meat or dairy products hence the bingeing on pancakes to empty the larder.

I recall at this time last year a friend who lives above the equator Facebooked: “Spring is in the air and it is GOOD!”  That may be true for the northern hemisphere, but here in the south the leaves are beginning to turn and fall: it’s almost Autumn for us.

Lent as ‘spring’? That doesn’t sound right.

It’s hard to know what to say when greeting grieving family at a funeral. In that awkward and unrehearsed moment we want to get it right and offer some real comfort. Several years after his own mother’s funeral a grieving son was still laughing when recalling one church leader who took both his hands as he stood at the hearse and commented “if it’s not one thing it’s another”.

That’s been on my mind a lot these days with news of day after day suffering in every part of the world. After the Auckland floods earlier this months there was the Turkey Syria earthquake with a death toll nearing 50,000 and now the cyclone devastation in the north of Aotearoa .

The discipline of daily writing keeps me alert to the presence and action of Jesus in my life every day.