Dear Parishioner,

On the first Sunday of Lent several hundred people took part in a ceremony called the Rite of Election at Westminster Cathedral. These are the people who are seeking to become members of the Catholic Church at Easter and whose names are enrolled among the company of the Elect, those who have been chosen to complete this final time of preparation before their baptism and reception. They join with the congregation of the 12 noon Sunday Mass for special prayers and blessing.

The term election is used of the Jewish people as those who were chosen by God to be in a special way his people, but in Christ we can now say that this election extends to the whole of humanity. Everybody, simply by virtue of being human, is chosen by God to be his beloved son or daughter. Nobody can be regarded as excluded from the embrace of God’s love; his desire is to share his divine life and love with all who are born into the world, and St. Paul tells us that God has already poured his Spirit into our hearts so that we can know ourselves to be the chosen ones of God, the ones in whom his life dwells.

In order to come to this knowledge we need to grow into a new mode of awareness, a new way of seeing, sometimes called ‘the third eye.’ This must be why the Gospels speak often of the blind being restored to sight, as in the Year A Gospel reading which we follow at the 12 noon mass because of its close relation with the process of initation. Physical blindess can be a potent symbol of the spiritual blindess from which we need to be released so that we can truly see who we are: see, that is, with the third or inward eye, which looks not at the outward appearance of things, but looks to the presence of God within.

There are many things in our world, even in our religion, which keep us on the surface, in the ordinary self-conscious awareness of our thoughts and feelings where we are most of the time, and which we think is real, but which is often false or unreal because it is everywhere else except in the present moment, the only moment where God is – memories of the past, projections into the future or just daydreaming or fantasy. Prayer begins when we learn how to take the attention off this flow of thoughts and feelings and be open to the presence of God in that ‘inner room’ to which Jesus says we need to go. Then nothing else is needed, for when we learn how to be present we cannot but fall into the arms of the living God.    

  Wishing you every blessing,     

   Fr Robin.

    

`

 

‘