Given at St Mary’s, Cadogan Street, on the third Sunday of Lent:
The season of Lent this year takes on a particular character as we begin now to pray for the election of a new successor to Saint Peter as the Bishop of Rome and the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church. In Pope Benedict XVI we saw a man whose own personal holiness and sincere pursuit of the truth was an example to us all in the Christian life, but of particular significance in understanding the spiritual purpose of this great season: a renewal of our sense of reliance on the very person of Jesus Christ whose passion, death, and resurrection we strive to proclaim in every word, thought, and deed. During Lent, we turn to the Lord with a sense of urgency, fixing our eyes on the one who saves: Oculi mei semper ad Dominum. Our eyes are fixed on the Lord, because it is the Lord who set us free (cf. Introit, Third Sunday of Lent; Ps. 24: 15-16).
That reliance on Christ, that need we have for his mercy and his grace, is reflected in this morning’s reading from the gospel according to Saint Luke. In his telling of the parable of the fig tree, the Lord tells the gathered people of their need to repent: ‘Unless you repent’, he says, ‘you will all perish’. If, like the fig tree, we cease to bear fruit – that is we cease to show signs of the life which God has implanted in us through our baptism – then our lives have very little purpose at all. It’s not simply that we may as well not live without that intrinsic purpose, it’s that, like the fig tree, life without fruit is barren and perfunctory. Without the life which God has given us – the life of grace – we risk bearing no fruit, giving nothing to the world, and being – if anything at all – a sign of death and lifelessness.
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Since about September this year, at the start of the Sung Mass on Sundays here at Holy Family we have replaced the opening hymn with a chant that changes each week. If you come to Mass on a weekday you will hear, even before the Priest says “In the Name of the Father,” a similar short text very often taken from the psalms or some other part of scripture. This text, whether sung or said, very often presents the ‘theme’ of the Mass. For instance at a Mass for the Dead we sing, “Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them.” And on Christmas Day, “Today Christ is born, today the Saviour has appeared.” The text is called the Entrance Antiphon or Introit, because it is supposed to be sung as the Sacred Ministers enter the church for the start of the Mass.
