I drive down to celebrate Mass with a contemplative community in Hampshire and all along the roadside the hedgerows are white with hawthorn. In gardens almond trees and magnolia begin to show their colours, and it is so wonderful to have the start of Lent coinciding with the arrival of spring in its delicate beauty.
This is what Lent is meant to be: a spiritual springtime when so much that that has lain dormant in our potential growth in grace is warmed into life. Lent does not signify a dour discipline we are going to impose on ourselves, but rather that grace is imperceptibly warming and fructifying the heart, tilting the axis on which it turns towards the light of the Resurrection.
