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LENT IS FORLOVING

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Also by Sheila Cassidy:

Audacity to Believe

Confessions of a Lapsed Catholic

Good Friday People

Light from the Dark Valley

The Loneliest Journey

Made for Laughter

Sharing the Darkness

LENT IS FORLOVING

A Lent Course about Love

SHEILA CASSIDY



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Father John King M.S.C. was a missionary in Papua

and New Guinea. He was very kind to me when,

as a bewildered seventeen-year-old, I sought him out

in his monastery in downtown Sydney because

I thought God was calling me to be a nun.

The passage below is from one of his letters

which I have treasured for over 50 years.

First published in 2012 by

Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd

1 Spencer Court

140142 Wandsworth High Street

London SW18 4JJ

Copyright 2012 Sheila Cassidy

The right of Sheila Cassidy to be identified as the Author of this work

has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs

and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978-0-232-52981-4

Still Falls the Rain from Collected Poems by Edith Sitwell reprinted by

permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com)

on behalf of the Estate of Edith Sitwell.

Excerpts from the English translation of The Liturgy of the Hours

1973, 1974, 1975, International Commission on English in the

Liturgy Corporation (ICEL); excerpts from the English translation of

The Roman Missal 2010, ICEL. All rights reserved.

All biblical quotations are taken from The Jerusalem Bible published

and copyright 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd

and Doubleday and Co Inc.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Designed and typeset by Judy Linard

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain, Glasgow



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CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Part I: L is for ... Loving 11

Chapter 1: God is Love 13

Chapter 2: How Should We Love God? 18

Chapter 3: Hesedand the God who Forgives 26

Chapter 4: Listening to God 35

Part II: E is for ... Empathy 47

Chapter 5: The Nature of Empathy 49

Chapter 6: Being Alongside those in Distress 57

Part III: N is for ...No! 67

Chapter 7: Saying No! to Ourselves 69Chapter 8: Saying No! to Others 76

Part IV: T is for ... Thank You 81

Chapter 9: Saying Thank you to God 83

Part V: HOLY WEEK 91

Chapter 10: Holy Thursday 93

Chapter 11: The Washing of the Feet 101Chapter 12: Thursday Night and Friday Morning 105

My grateful thanks are due to my friends Clare Hallward

and Michelle Copley who researched and typed for me

while we were in the USA. Also to Judith Newton,

without whose hard work and enthusiasm I could

never have produced a finished manuscript. Lastly my

thanks are due to Helen, David and Ginny who

turned a manuscript into a book.


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Chapter 13: Good Friday 113

Chapter 14: Holy Saturday 120

Chapter 15: Easter Sunday 123

Select Bibliography 128

Lent is for Loving8

INTRODUCTION

It strikes me that Ive got a bit of a nerve to write a Lent Book

when I havent personally keptLent in the traditional way for

twenty years or more. On the other hand I am not constrained

by strict ideas of how Lent should be, so perhaps I can shine a

new light upon this time-honoured season.

As a convent educated cradle Catholic, I have, however,

experienced many Lents which have been imposed upon me

from the outside and even a few of which I have imposed, mostlyunsuccessfully, upon myself. The Lenten attempt which I

remember most clearly is the one in which I resolved on Ash

Wednesday morning to give up sherry for the six weeks leading

up to Easter. Alas, that evening I was so tired and fraught after

my day working at the Hospice, where I was Medical Director,

that I abandoned my pious resolve in under an hour! I did once

give up chocolate for six weeks in an effort to lose weight but

have since lost the willpower and regained the weight!

Over the past ten years or so, I have developed a theory that

God herself imposes a Lentenfastupon us from time to time andwe are well advised to keep our strength up to cope with that

when it comes.

Illness, bereavement, depression, unemployment and natural

disasters take their toll on all of our lives, swamping us with gr ief,

pain and powerlessness: these days, you might almost ask who

needs Lent? This month alone six young men have been killed in

Afghanistan; a good fr iend has lost a clever and beautiful young

daughter to suicide: my beloved dog has died of cancer and a

policeman, blinded by a madmans bullet, has taken his own life

because he felt himself to be a burden. Babies are starving in

Africa and a fifteen-year-old lad was tortured and murdered

because his sister and her husband thought he was a witch! Fear,


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Lent is for Loving10

greed, stupidity, cruelty and malice are somehow woven into the

fabric of our world. No wonder Jesus gave us the parable of the

wheat and the tares!

Some, therefore, choose their Lents, fasting and praying and so

forth. Others get their Lents thrust upon them, like my own time

in a Chilean gaol forty odd years ago, or the day I found out I

had cancer in both breasts and had to have a double mastectomy.

The other theory that I have developed is that each period of

suffering we endure is akin to a degree module: we emerge

somehow wiser and with more understanding of life and its trials.

Before I continue, let me make myself clear: I do not mock

those who give up alcohol or chocolate for Lent: anything that

strengthens our self-discipline has got to be worth the effort. I

think that what Im trying to say is this: if prayer and reading and

self-denial are worth doing for Lent, perhaps we should be doingthem all the year round!

If this sounds like a recipe for yearlong penitence and

abstinence think again. Christianity is not a blueprint for

repression but for joy: for a life of fulfilment beyond our wildest

dreams. Did not Jesus say I have come that you may have life and

have it to the full (John 10:10).

In order to marshal my ideas I have taken the word LENT as an

acronym:

L is for LOVE

E is for EMPATHY

N is quite simply for: NO! and

T is for THANK YOU, GOD

What follows will be my understanding of how to be a Christian

in these our days and in this land. My sources are largely

scriptural: the Hebrew texts which Jesus was brought up on: and

the four gospels. There will also be the occasional text from other

great religions which so often contain a passion which surprises

us, and as many fragments of poetry and song as I can get away

with; because they rise daily into my consciousness whenever I

sit down to pray.

PART I

L is for

LOVING




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CHAPTER 1

GOD IS LOVE

God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God,

And God lives in him

(1 John 4:16)

It is so wonderfully succinct, isnt it? And yet the living out of the

consequences of this belief is the endeavour of a lifetime. When Ifirst began to think to reflect on this premise, that God is love, I

was reminded of the story of the devious lawyer and the parable

of the Good Samar itan. St Luke tells it like this in chapter 10, verse

25: There was a lawyer who tr ied to catch Jesus out by asking him,

Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Perhaps he

thought he would say something not in keeping with the Hebrew

Scriptures. Jesus, though, turned the question back on him, asking

him what heread in the Law. The Lawyers reply was this: You must

love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with

all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as

yourself. Youre right, said Jesus do this and life is yours.

Now I have been familiar with this passage since my childhood

and I assumed that it was to be found in the Ten Command-

ments. To my surprise, however, I found that the first

commandment says nothing about love, but forbids us from

worshipping false gods. The second commandment prohibits the

fashioning and worship of graven images while the third says You

shall not utter the name of Yahweh your God to misuse it. Im

sure you are familiar with the others. My point is this: Love of

God (as opposed to fear and awe) comes quite a bit later in the

Old Testament, as does the injunction to love our neighbour asourselves.




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So there we have it again:Act justly: dont steal or defraud or

withhold your employees wages. Love tenderly: be kind, be

generous; share your bread with the hungry and shelter the

homeless poor; visit the sick; dont cheat on your wife I could

go on and on. Walk humbly with your God: Im not quite soconfident about paraphrasing this injunction but my guess is that

it tells us to acknowledge that all we have and are and do is Gods

gift to us. Our natural gifts our intellect, wisdom, creative

powers are all pure gift. We are merely stewards of what we

have been given.

In St Johns account of the Last Supper, Jesus chooses the

theme of love and service for his farewell discourse. My little

children, he says, I wont be around much longer, so listen

carefully:

I give you a new commandment:

Love one another; just as I have loved you,

you also must love one another;

By this love you have for one another.

Everyone will know that you are my disciples .

(John 13:14)

Sometimes I wonder how we dare call ourselves Christians:

followers of Christ. We bitch behind each others backs; we ignore

the poor, the lonely and the starving. And we think that giving

up chocolate for Lent will set the balance straight? Of course we

dont all do this all of the time. Sometimes were really generous

to our friends. We buy copies ofThe Big Issueand run marathons

for charity. But somehow we fail to live Jesus message while

getting worked up about other issues.

The issue for debate this week on TVs Channel 4 is whether

or not same-sex couples should be allowed to get marr ied. The

other hot one is whether the wife of a young man, paralysed from

the neck down, will be breaking the law if she helps him to end

his life. There is much talk from worthy Catholics and Anglicans

who say that marriage is only for heterosexual couples. Would itnot be better if they spent their energy protesting against the

God is Love 15

By dint of cross-referencing the texts in my annotated

Jerusalem Bible I found part of the passage from Luke 10 in

Deuteronomy 6:4: Listen, Israel: Yahweh your God is the one

Yahweh. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, with all your strength. Let these words I urgeon you today to be written on your heart.

Although I could find no mention of love of neighbour in this

Deuteronomy passage, it was written clearly in the Book of

Leviticus. After a long passage of instructions on how we should

treat our neighbour, e.g. we must not deal deceitfully or fraudu-

lently with them, or withhold a labourers wages until the

following day, I stumbled on it at the end of the paragraph. After

an injunction not to hate our brother it said: You must love your

neighbour as yourself. I am Yahweh. (Lev.19:18)

Presumably these two passages must have been linked togetherby the Jewish teachers long before Jesus time so that the lawyer

knew them by heart, and Jesus clearly saw them as being the key

to good living. One finds echoes of this theme throughout the

Hebrew Scriptures. One of my great f avourites is in the book of

the prophet Micah and is a passage much beloved by the

American Missionaries whom I met in Chile. The prophet speaks

rhetorically:

With what gift shall I come into the Lords presence and bow

down before God on high?

Shall I come with holocausts, with calves one year old?

Will he be pleased with rams by the thousand,

with libations of oil in torrents?

Must I give my first-born for what I have done wrong,

the fruit of my body for my own sin?

What is good has been explained to you, man;

this is what Yahweh asks of you:

Only this, to act justly,

to love tenderly

and to walk humbly with your God.

(Micah 6:6)





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For reflectionRead again

John 13:34; Micah 6:8

At the start of this Lenten season, take some time to thinkabout what Lent means to you. You may want to use the

time for some specific purpose; you may be experiencing a

time of difficulty or barrenness; you may simply wish to

focus on deepening your relationship with God.

Using the LENT acronym explained in the Introduction(see p. 10), ponder on the themes to try and discern where

it might lead you this Lent.

Love is the central message of the Christian gospel. Spendsome time considering what this means in practice. What

does it mean to love God with all your heart, mind and soul,and your neighbour as yourself?

Are there positive changes we can make that might makeliving out the message of love and service more possible?

What do we need to enable this to happen in our lives?

PrayerLord, teach us to love one another:

Both friends and foes, whole and flawed.

God is Love 17

horrific slaughter taking place in Syria as we speak? I have no

intention of coming down on one side or the other in these

contentious ethical issues. I am simply reminding myself, and

anyone who will listen, that at the heart of Christianity is love of

God and love of neighbour.This is the lens through which we must examine the ethical

questions of our day. Will the joy of a same sex couple allowed

to celebrate their love and commitment to each other in this time

honoured way be of no consequence to God? Does He who

made two men or two women love each other not desire their

health and happiness as much as He desires yours or mine? Sexual

inclination is such a complex issue. Where does the desire for

sadomasochistic sex come from? What are we to make of

swingers? Why do men rape? Why do they molest children? My

guess is that we should be worrying much more about theseclearly abusive and deeply damaging inclinations than arguing

about whether the proprietors of a bed and breakfast should

allow two gay men to sleep in the same bed:

There is room in the world for loving,

There is no room for hate.

(From Our World by John Harriott in Fields of Praise)

Returning to the injunction that we should love the Lord our

God with all our heart and soul and our neighbour as our self , I

would like to spend some time asking myself and my readers just

what does it mean to loveGod? How can we love the God we

cannot see and cannot imagine? Of course we can and do

imagine the man Jesus and even the risen Christ, but what about

our creator, God? How can we begin to love Him (or could it

even be Her?)


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