Lent Prayer Letter

The Grand Prior, Fra’ Max Rumney, writes, this Ash Wednesday:

Dear friends,

I was privileged last Saturday to attend the enthronement of Mgr Richard Moth as the new Archbishop of Westminster with some other members of the Order. His homily can act as a good starting point for our Lenten penances and prayers, which start today, Ash Wednesday:

“Fan into flame the gift of God… for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.” (2 Tim 1:6-7)

“God’s call to us is not a call to power as so often exercised in the world, to achieve dominion over others. Rather it is characterised by self-control, not a self-control ‘generated’ as it were from within ourselves, but a self-control guided, empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is characterised by love, a love that reflects to all the love that we see in Christ. This is a love that is total-self-giving, self-emptying to the point of the death that we see depicted so clearly in the great rood here, above the Sanctuary.

“This is Christ-like Service, that brings Faith, Love and Hope to a world that, in our present age, cries out for Hope. This Service is our Mission as Christ’s Church. St. Paul reminds us that we receive the gifts that come to us through the Holy Spirit, often experienced in gentleness and in the silence of prayer. These gifts are experienced in their fullness, fanned into flame, through our living out of the Mission to which we are called.”

(You can read the whole homily here.)

These reflections are particularly apposite for us: in our Order we are called to a Mission of self-giving and of service, which can only be the fruit of prayer. In this period of Lent, let us renew our commitment to prayer and worship, the means by which we build our relationship with the Lord, and the root of all we do.

At the simplest level we can make sure that we fulfil our duty every day to pray the Prayer of the Order and pray for the Pope, the Church, our Superiors and all our confrères, for Our Lords the Sick and Our Lords the Poor (Code, Article 88). We might also take up some additional prayer, such as the Rosary, some part of the Divine Office, or commit to making a Holy Hour in a local church each week.

To help you, we will being doing three things this Lent:

-      Each Friday in Lent we will come together for Stations of the Cross at Our Lady of the Assumption, Warwick Street at 6:30pm. During this beautiful service (around 30-40 minutes long), we meditate on the saving Passion of the Lord. Please try and come at least once or twice between now and Easter.

-      Before Stations on Fridays, at 6pm, we will recite the Rosary together, using Zoom video-conferencing so that people can join wherever there are across the country.

-      And finally, each Monday of Lent I will circulate a meditation on passages from the Gospel of St Luke, chapters 9-19, forming a ‘Lenten Journey to Jerusalem with Saint Luke’ which Fr Gwilym Evans, known to many of you, has kindly composed where he is based, in the Holy City itself. If you do not already receive our emails, you can subscribe.

I wish you a holy and fruitful Lent – please pray for me also during this holy season.

Fra’ Max