Lenten Station Mass Eight
Wednesday Week Three
 
Dear brother and sisters, we have arrived at our final Station Mass on this Lenten Season.  I know the good people of the Port will say we have kept the best till last and who am I to disagree?
 
By now we are well underway in our Lenten journey and we have been reflecting upon how this season is really a time of grace that God gives to us to purify our minds from the things of this world that can drag them down, and to raise our minds, instead,to our Heavenly Father and the things eternal that last.  So, although it is a season of penance and fasting it is not a sad time but a joyful one because we are preparing to celebrate the Feasts by which the Lord Jesus Christ brought us and our world back to life and ushered in a new Creation as its First Born.
 
Our Station Masses have been a time for us to reacquaint ourselves with our fundamental Christian spirituality, passed onto us from our Old Testament forbears, of prayer and fasting and almsgiving.  These are the mainstay of our Christian life throughout the year and only intensify during Lent. We discovered how the three make a strong triple cord raising us from the world into God and that we need all three.  The Church does not ask us to choose either prayer or fasting or giving alms but to embrace all three and bind them together in an unbreakable interweave that attaches us to the things of God. 
 
We also reflected on how the Lord Jesus was much more than any prophet of the Old Times and so He calls us to a virtue greater than the Pharisees.  For Jesus of Nazareth is God Himself among us, infinite and eternal, and He calls us to go the extra mile in our discipleship if we want to understand Who He really is and the adventure to which He calls us. In fact, He calls us to the blessed life of the Gospels and, each in our own way, to follow Him along the path of the evangelical counsels.  So, He calls us to live more simply and not get too attached to our creature comforts and accessories.  He calls us to chastity in our relationships so that we are always in possession of ourselves and our passions in order to make a sincere gift of ourselves to others in love.  He calls us to the obedience of faith which means rejecting the notion that we are free to choose which teachings and commandments of the Church we will follow and which we will ignore.  Our world constantly tells us we are only really free when we choose for ourselves and control our lives with our own autonomy, but the Lord tells Peter he is a true disciple only when he lets God put a belt round his waist and take him to places he would rather not go. Peter found real faith and freedom only when he gave up control of his life and ideas and surrendered them to Jesus and His wisdom, even when he did not understand it.
 
Of course, it took Peter a while to really follow Jesus with singleness of heart and his path to the Lord was littered with many falls along the way.  Yet he knew there was nowhere else to go than Jesus Who had the words of eternal life. So, when he fell he did not walk away from Jesus but immediately confessed his sins and found the joy of the Lord’s peace in a renewed call.  We too fall often but what matters is that we confess our sins, are sorry and want to change.  Such confession makes the angels in Heaven rejoice and it assures us of God’s new grace.
 
We can end our Lenten journey of Station Masses now in no better way than in commending ourselves to Our Blessed Mother Mary, the One who accompanied Her Beloved Son along the Way to Calvary and remained with Him to the end, standing at the foot of the Cross. It was from there, in the Lord’s last great act of love for us on earth and before commending Himself into His Father’s hands, that He left us Mary as our Mother, as the Mother of the Church and Mother of the World.
 
In the Scriptures we heard Moses advising the people that they should not forget the great things their eyes had seen of His mighty intervention on their behalf in the land of Egypt, nor should they let them slip from their heart all the days of their life.  Through Her Yes to the Angel Gabriel Our Blessed Mother Mary allowed our world to see the greatest thing of all, the grace of God Himself among us in Our Lord Jesus Christ.  In the Temple, as Simeon raised the Son of Mary into his arms he proclaimed : My eyes have seen not only the Glory of Israel, but also the Light of the Nations and the salvation God had prepared before the whole world.  This great thing that Simeon saw with his eyes, the Lord Jesus and the Salvation He would bring albeit by being rejected, Mary did not let slip from her heart all the days of Her life, but instead pondered and treasured it in Her heart.  
 
It was Mary, along with Saint Joseph, who taught the child Jesus about the Law and the Prophets and She lived to see Him, in His turn, ponder and treasure them until He brought to fulfilment the long journey of God’s promised to be with and save His people. 
 
Then, so that all would be accomplishes, at the foot of the Cross Jesus gave Mary a new son in Saint John standing there by Her side, saying: Woman, behold your son. And Our Lord continues to give Her countless children born though Baptism and what Mary saw with Her eyes and pondered in Her heart of Her Son She now tells us, Her children and children’s children. 
 
The message of the Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, to the Church in every generation is summed up in the last words She uttered in the Scriptures: Do whatever He tells you! Or, take notice of the laws and customs that the Lord teaches you today, and observe them, that you may have life and may enter and take possession of Heaven that the Lord the God of your fathers is giving you. 
 
Through Her wise and prudent Yes to the Angel Mary has ensured that, forever, the Church has its God as near to us whenever we call Him.  Thus, all generations call Her Blessed Whose soul glorifies the Lord and whose spirit rejoices in God Her Saviour. 
 
It is to Her in this Lenten Season that we commend our journey and the journey of our Church along the Way to Calvary with Her Son, and to Her that we commend our rising again in Him, Son of God and Son of Mary, who makes all things new.