Youth Fellowship - 1962

I have been asked to give a talk on Lent. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday.

According to the arrangement of the Prayer book, the Ash Wednesday Collect is to be repeated every day during Lent in addition to the Collect for Sunday. The Collect: “Create and make in us new and contrite hearts that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness.”

Notice the prayer: ‘Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.’ It is the intention of the Church that as a result of all our prayers, study and devotions during this season our hearts may be changed - a changed outlook on life, a changed relationship with our fellowmen, a changed attitude towards our religious duties, and a new love and devotion to God.

Unless there is such a change at the end of the Season of Lent, all our efforts at attending additional services, and listening to sermons will be in vain. It is easy to go through this Season of Lent, Good Friday and Easter with no change in our manner of life at the end. We may attend services and feel momentarily uplifted by the worship, but we may not be willing to face the challenge the Season of Lent brings to all of us. By the repetition of the Collect every day the Church brings before us our duty of cooperating with God to make that prayer effective in us: “Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.”

The Season of Lent is not meant to be a gloomy time, but it is meant to be a serious time in which we think as deeply as we are able about God’s purpose for the world and our response to His call. These are grave days for the Church, particularly to us here in Ceylon. The life of the Church is threatened both by immensely powerful forces from without and by a process of inward decay. The hold of the Christian Faith on the life of the nations in the world certainly seems far less firm than it was fifty years ago. It is a serious thing that so many Christians are content to go on living on the surface without facing squarely God’s demands on them. There is a great conflict going on in the world between God and the powers of evil. We believe that in this conflict God will become ultimately victorious. But this victory depends on every one of us. On whose side are we going to work? On the side of evil or on the side of God? That is what we have to decide for ourselves during Lent.

The Collect suggests that if we would know and experience divine forgiveness, we must see sin in its true light and respond accordingly. There is a tendency in all of us to think lightly of our sins. We do not sufficiently realise the seriousness of our sins. There are great sinners who are not at all conscious of their sins. That is not surprising because one of the effects of sin is insensitivity. Sin makes us lose sensitivity to sin. Sin blunts our moral faculties and blinds our judgment on ourselves.

This complaint is heard all through the Bible. In Isaiah we read of God saying, “Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.” The fault of the people of Israel was that they did not know that they were living in sin. They had not become conscious of their sins. St. Paul speaking of the heathen of his time refers to them as being past feeling - that is the extreme limit of this dangerous condition. A man may commit a sin, but if he is conscious of his sins there is hope. But if his moral and physical condition is such that he does not see sin in himself, if he is past feeling, that is a terrible condition to be in. What about ourselves? What is the condition in which we are? Let this Season of Lent be a time of real heart searching for all of us. May all our prayers and devotions help us to be changed men and women.