Lent is the period of 40 days before Easter, excluding Sundays, when Christians are asked to prepare for the great festival of Easter. It excludes Sundays because these are special days when we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord.

Some people use it as a graced time to keep fit, to try out a new diet and lose the mounting paunch, or to dump some habit that’s beginning to take over their lives. Others see it as an opportunity to get closer to the Lord, to dedicate more time to deepening that friendship, to journey with Jesus and learn again to be his companion on the road.

Personally I see Lent as a special time to hear the call of Jesus again: “Come follow me.” I wrote the book Journeying with Jesus – a Companion’s Guide – as a kind of guidebook for the journey, with seven important stations on the way where we pause with Jesus and take time to reflect on our lives.

The first station is the wilderness where we see Jesus propelled into the wilderness to face a variety of temptations. Will Jesus face the hunger that is part of his mission or take a short-cut and turn stones into bread? Can we in our turn serve the Lord with an undivided heart even when things go wrong in our lives and we feel alone?

The second station is with the woman at the well, where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman who has been hopelessly unlucky in her relationships. We watch as Jesus does not run in the opposite direction but reach out to her in kindness. How do we meet people who are different from us, whose lifestyle we disapprove of, who have made a legion of mistakes?

The third station is with Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration. After Jesus takes a poll of who the crowds think he is – and the answers he receives are not very flattering – he climbs a mountain to pray to his Father. As part of the prayer he hears his identity announced: “This is my beloved Son!” In the voice of love he is transfigured. What would make us radiant and aglow in our own lives? Whose voice would make all the difference in the world?

The fourth station is along the road of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus’ public ministry could be filmed as a road movie that starts in the wilderness and eventually reaches its destination in Jerusalem. Jesus leaves all behind him – family, home, neighbours – and takes new roads, gathering new friends, and devising new ways of reaching out to people. The journey is not just from one place to the next but from one perspective to the next. In staying close to Jesus we borrow his eyes and learn to look at people and the world in a new way.

At the fifth station we are at table with Jesus at the Last Supper. We watch Jesus trying to be realistic about the time of terror ahead and notice how his disciples cannot enter that conversation but have a seminar about which of them is the greatest. You realise that you can be in the same room as people but on a different planet. If you sensed your death was approaching in a few hours, and you organised a final meal: who would you invite? What would you love to leave behind you?

The sixth station is the crucifixion and death. We notice the absence of key friends; the tourists who pause on their busy schedule; the chief priests howling with delight. You look up at Jesus and wonder what he did wrong to end up here. Could he have done things differently? You notice how he refuses to move out of his agony and disappointment, breathing words of forgiveness. You love this man’s stubborn love to the end. Can you learn anything from the way he dies?

The seventh station is on the road to Emmaus, where we join two bewildered and hurt disciples getting out of Jerusalem. The city is the place where they watched the death of their leader and also the demise of their hopes. They are now ex-disciples of a dead prophet with nowhere to go but away. Then you watch a stranger join them and reveal himself to them in the breaking of the bread. And you realise that you meet the same Jesus in the breaking of the bread when you join the celebration of the Eucharist. And your heart burns with gratitude.

Whatever you do, dear friends, during this special time of grace, I hope you have a happy Lent!

The snow seems to be thawing at last - funny how what was first welcomed as beautiful became tiresome so quickly, making every journey a grim haul.  If you had to dig yourself out, it couldn't have been as bad as these poor folk. Check out the link and enjoy: The Big Dig Out

I was sent the following letter which is the funniest evaluation I have ever received. The writer is happy for me to share it but wishes to remain anonymous on the site.

Dear Fr. Denis,

Thank you so much for the series of talks in Clapham which I miss and have to make do with Andrew Marr.

However I did make the very wise investment in buying your CDs on Jesus and the Gospels which – possibly not your most uplifting compliment – have completely transformed my ironing.

Previously the mistress of “smooth it out and bury it in the basket” now has everything ironed to perfection as I ponder the transfiguration. My husband admitted that 15 years of marriage to a Catholic has had little impact on him, but 15 pairs of immaculately ironed underpants in his drawer is making him think again.

I had a decidedly dodgy professor who tediously reminded his female juniors that the way to a man’s heart was not through his stomach but through his underpants. Perhaps I misjudged the professor as the truth of this remark has now been revealed.

I heard the children whispering, “Ask her now – she’s got her Jesus CDs on.” Clearly and happily the influence of the CDs goes beyond my personal struggles.

All the best for your future adventures and many thanks again.

The season of Advent resets the clocks and calendars of Christian worship as Advent summons us to a new beginning. And as we approach Christmas people worry about all sorts of things: Will the weather hold up? Where to go at Christmas? Will we survive the in-laws who are coming to stay? Will we eat or drink too much, or say the wrong thing? Will we survive Christmas dinner, without someone saying: “I never liked you anyway!” Will it be a dreary old time or a good time?

And, of course, there is the worry about presents, about what to give this one or that one; and you hear people politely checking your pyjama size, or worse, your slipper size for predictable gifts. One woman said she knew she was getting old when one of the kids gave her a set of thermal underwear for her Christmas!

Does Santa still have your address or do you have to buy your own presents? As one observer noted:

Just before last Christmas, I sat in a café inside a fashionable department store, watching the shoppers come and go. Most of them, I thought, had come not to buy things they already wanted. It was as if they had come looking for something to want – something that might fill a nameless need, even if only for a moment.

And so the hunt goes on for something that will satisfy the huge hunger inside us.

Time moves on; perhaps this Advent is a good moment to pause, to look back and to look forward – to look back at a year that is closing and look ahead to the year that is beginning.

Advent is a time to pause. The writer Gertrud Nelson makes an interesting suggestion when she writes:

Pre-Christian peoples who lived far north and who suffered the loss of life and light with the disappearance of the sun had a way of wooing back life and hope. Their solution was to bring all ordinary action and daily routine to a halt. They gave into the nature of winter, came away from the fields. And put away their tools. They removed the wheels from their carts and wagons, decorated them with greens and lights and brought them in to hang on their halls. They brought the wheels indoors as a sign of a different time, a time to stop and turn inward. Slowly, slowly they wooed the sun god back. Imagine what would happen if we were to follow that practice and remove – just one – say the right front tyre from our cars and use this for our Advent wreath. Indeed, things would stop. Having to stay put, we would lose the opportunity to escape or deny our feelings because our cars could not bring us away to the circus in town.

Interesting thought, that . . . We pause for a few moments, leaving our cars intact with four wheels and a spare.

When you pause and look back at this year, do you think the world is a safer place than it was this time last year?

Do you think our world has progressed much? Do you think you are a better person? How have you grown this year? What good things have happened to you? What bad experiences have you endured?

Have you lost anyone close to you this year? Has anyone close to you died, or has someone you loved moved away, out of your life? Or have you moved on from them? Is there a new absence in your life?

Have you made new friends? Has it been a good year for your family? Have you stayed close to them? Do they know you love them?

Do you feel better about yourself now than you did last year? Are you still excited about your vocation, your life, your work? Or are you content in retirement, watching the seasons change and listening to the birds sing? How have you changed?

And when you look ahead to the coming year, how do you feel? Are you looking forward to this new year? Is there anything you are afraid of? Is there something you are dreading? What are looking forward to? Anything?

Dear friends, we are a community of memory that looks back; we are a community of Spirit that looks forward. It’s important, though not easy, to look back with kindness, and not be trapped in the past. It’s essential like the four old people at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel to look forward stubbornly in hope.

This year is closing down and a new year beckons. Let us hand over the past to God for his healing blessing. Let us ask the Lord to face the future with us because we do not want to face it alone.

Let us pray for each other, and for all those far away, the ones we love and cherish: that each one might know the promise of the Lord that brings the Gospel to a close:

“Know this, I will be with you even unto the end of the world.”

November 17th 2009 A disappointing day at hospital When I got to Basingstoke hospital earlier today I was really excited: the registrar looked at the inflammation on my side following the kidney operation and said that they could operate on that at the same time as the other hernias, which would diminish the pain and the inflammation. Great, I thought.

Then I saw the nurse, who took my temperature and blood pressure, asked 73 questions and filled in 4 pages of forms.

Then I got into a smock, slippers and dressing-gown and got tagged on each arm.

Then I saw the anaesthetist who asked me 30 questions and ticked boxes in another two pages. She said she would see me in about twenty minutes to knock me out. Thus cheered, I went out and sat in the waiting room.

Then the matron came calling my name, hustling me into the nearest office. I felt privileged and said, “A real matron! We see you only on telly.”

She smiled and asked: "How forgiving are you feeling, Father?"

She explained that there was no bed for me, and that there were a large number of emergency cases. I said fine: things happen, thinking I would be back tomorrow. But she explained that they should be able to do the operation sometime before Christmas . . .

My sister Ellen, who had flown down from Scotland, had waited to hear I was in the operating theatre, but she saw me sooner than intended – dressed and ready to leave. We had tea and sympathy and buns.

Hope your day is going better.

Personal prayer is simple; it is also challenging: being ourselves before God while allowing God to be God. Two different “presences” come together to forge a relationship of mutual caring.

Intimacy can frighten us at the best of times, and we can be shy of being ourselves in prayer as we can with those we trust. We’re ever alert to signs of disapproval, wariness, shuffling. Should we adjust or carry on?

Prayer is a meeting between two lovers, each longing to be closer to one another. It’s a coming together, to talk and to listen, to understand and, hopefully, to grasp the beauty and complexity of each other. If we want to be known for who we are, nervous about being misrepresented, it’s a safe bet that God wants the same.

In our prayer the challenge is to be real, truthful, heartfelt, unaffected. There is little point in dressing up before the one who knows us better than we could ever know ourselves. And when we pray regularly at least God can’t pretend he doesn’t know us.

In personal prayer we approach the God of all mercies without make-up or disguise, without mask or pretence, hoping to find an expression for who we are and what we’re facing in life. Personal prayer is not performance; it is the language of real life.

Take an example from Saint Paul: the apostle pleads with God in prayer to take away his newly discovered weaknesses, which seriously embarrass him as a perfectionist. For someone who has never once disobeyed the law, been a Pharisee to outclass all other Pharisees, this new discovery is seriously disturbing. But God’s declared response reveals to Paul that this will never happen: his request is refused, and he will have to learn to live with weaknesses all the days of his life.

You then watch Paul make a dramatic shift, suddenly explaining to his now bewildered readers: “I will be very happy to make my weaknesses my special boast, so that the power of Christ may stay over me.” How about that for a spectacular change of perspective? How about that for the power of prayer?

Paul doesn’t try to hide from God, although previous to this he’d always suspected that God had no truck with weakness, only with flawless performance. In the light of prayer Paul has now moved beyond that view and shares an utter stunning revelation: not only that weaknesses are no obstacle to God’s love but that God’s glory can shine through them. Indeed it might be true to say that God is a lot more skilled at accepting our weakness than we are.

Personal prayer is neither a litany of alleluias nor a shopping-list of petitions: prayer is much more nuanced and can take many forms. As in the great book of the Psalms, prayer can be a scream or an endless groan, a grievance for some hurt; it might be an angry complaint or an accusation; it could be a thank-you note for a loved one or for a special grace that has been granted; it could be delicious praise, shyly made.

The great tradition of the Psalms teaches us that we should pray always, no matter what. Whatever mood or condition we are in, whatever is happening in our life, we keep in touch with the God who is slow to anger and rich in graciousness. Nothing about us is excluded from prayer.

One of the great privileges of being a priest is to listen to people who come “just for a chat” – which often turns into a struggle to be real about themselves, their relationships, their aspirations. They come not to discuss projects or plans or business – thank God for that! – but to find a voice for what in happening in their lives and what they think is really going on.

After sitting down and carefully adjusting something that doesn’t need adjusting, they begin by commenting on the fitfulness of the weather or the colour of the curtains – anything except what they have come to talk about. That’s okay: we all need time to gather our confidence and point ourselves in the right direction. You wait for a gentle break in the nervous flow of small talk to ask Jesus’ risky question: “What do you want me to do for you?”

The story then begins cautiously, often in a roundabout way, as the person heads for the destination. You pay attention to the pauses, the rephrasing, the uncertainty, the adjustments, the sudden breaths. You taste the awkward silences. The body language tells its own story. At times you might wonder what kind of God they believe in and how they got to this point. You resist interrupting, clarifying, filling in. You try your best to stay focused without thinking about Brother Anthony’s soup. You cannot help but admire their heroic effort to be frank and the resolve to get it all out.

You try to give this person your best thinking while respecting ambiguity and confusion. You refuse to write their script or pretend that you have some exclusive hotline to God that will guarantee a quick fix to their problems. You stay humble before such huge honesty and try to honour it, yes, with your own. You remind yourself that you are supposed to proclaim Good News, not just orthodoxy, so you make a real effort to ask the right questions, understand the issues, broaden the canvas, and, together, seek a way forward.

These times are very close to prayer.

And I know, dear reader, that soon I will be in that other chair when I visit my ancient wise mentor. And he will ask me, after the usual entrance rites and a double gin and small tonic: “So tell me, Denis, what’s going on?” And then it will be my turn to tell the story, find delicate words, pause, rephrase, correct, try, with as much honesty as I can muster, to relate the truth about myself. Not easy. But we all need someone with whom to be real before God, as a practice for prayer.

Prayer, of course, is not just about ourselves, transfixed by our own agenda in a free counselling session with God. We are expected to have a place in our prayer and in our lives for the poor, the lonely, the outcast, the forgotten. Prayer is not only being open to God about ourselves but bothering God about the peripheral people. Prayer pushes us out, beyond ourselves.