Dear brothers and sisters, it is a joy to be with you as our Lenten journey into Easter enters its second week.  We were reflecting at yesterday’s Station Mass how, by this time into Lent, some of us may have already broken our Lenten promises. But all we have to do is humbly take them up again.  God Our Father understands our weakness and that we fail but he delights to see us begin again and again, each time with a little more humility, faith and love. 
 
In our Station Masses so far we have seen Lent is God’s special gift to us to fill our discipleship with gladness and how Lent is not a sad but a a joyful season because we are waiting in hope for the coming of Our Saviour, Jesus Christ to renew our Church and world at Easter.  The season of Lent summons us to rebirth, as a Church and personally as Christ’s followers, so we can then share the fulness of His life in our Heavenly Father.
 
In the first three of our Station Masses we reflected on the classic Christian spirituality to which we are all called as Christ’s disciples. It is a call to the triple spiritual cord of prayer and fasting and almsgiving by which the Lord raises us up from the mediocrity of life into intimate communion with Him.  Prayer, fasting and almsgiving should be part of our Christian lives all year round, with Lent just a more intense living of it.  Saint Augustine said our prayer is like a bird that needs wings to fly to God and those wings were fasting and almsgiving.  So we do not choose between prayer, fasting and almsgiving  but need all three working together to raise our lives from mediocrity to fervour.
 
In the next three Station Masses our catechesis focused on the evangelical counsels of simplicity in our personal lives, chastity in our relationships and obedience to a rule in our spiritual lives.  In Jesus there is something greater than Jonah and Solomon and He calls us to go beyond the Law, to go the extra mile, if we really want to know Him and live the true adventure of life in Him.  
 
We know we often fail in this living out of our Christian lives and reaching up to the way of the evangelical counsels and so our need for confession and repentance and the experience of Our Father’s mercy for our sins and new grace to begin again. 
 
Every day the Lord calls us to an examen of our conscience, to see where in our day we passed up moments of prayer, fasting and charity, or rejected to live simply, chastely or in obedience to our rule of life.  Such an examen will usually point out ways we lives the day too richly, too concerned about how we look in our dress or what we are going to eat. Often our loving concern does not go beyond our own family and home, making sure everything is okay there, but without too much thought for the poor and needy under our nose and all across the world..
 
It is not really possible to be caught up in consumer lifestyles or, what Jeremiah calls the things of the flesh and, at the same time, have our hearts turned to the Lord. In the end Jeremiah warns us when we are too focused on a closed circle of friends and family round about us our lives  become like a dry scrub in the wastelands, like parched places of the wilderness or uninhabited salt land.
 
Then something inside us gets restless and irritated.  If only we knew it was our soul pining for the blessed life which is its true home, like in those who trust in the Lord for their hope and whose souls are a tree by the waterside, evergreen and bearing fruit.
 
Because our heart is more devious than any other thing and, at times, perverse a nightly examen of conscience in the Lord’s presence before going to sleep brings to light its secret intentions.  Sitting or kneeling by our beds for our Night Prayers we pause and ask the Lord to be with us as we go through the day with Him to   search and probe our heart and pierce its secrets and judge our conduct.  We ask ourselves three questions; Today, how did I show my love to God, to my brothers and sisters and to myself?  And we conclude with an act of contrition, commending ourselves to God’s mercy and asking His Holy Spirit to guide us better tomorrow.  A good examen done every night will soon gently point out our faults, eventually generate some firm resolve to change and, in the end see us pick up speed in our journey into holiness.
 
In effect this examen constitutes a daily conversion to God and a retaking of our path of discipleship.
 
Every month we bring to completion this examen by going to the Sacrament of Confession.  For Confession needs only three things; to confess our sins, to say we are sorry, and to want to do better with God’s grace.  Then father grants us absolution of all our sins and we know it is Jesus Who has taken them away.
 
Brothers and sisters if we want to please Our Heavenly Father there is no better way than humbly turning from our sins and confessing our mistakes and faults to Him.  A brief look at the Gospels assures us of that.  When His lost sheep comes home he calls together His friends and neighbours to rejoice with Him, when His prodigal son returns home in penance he puts His best robe on him and kills the fatted calf, when his disciple Peter falls on his knees confessing his sins He raises him to be a fisher of men and when the good thief acknowledges punishment for his crime Jesus promises him paradise that very day. So let us not be afraid to acknowledge and confess our sins and seek the Lord’s mercy and forgiveness, and we can be sure it will not only bring us new grace but cause the angels in Heaven to rejoice.
 
We turn to our Blessed Mother who knows how Her Son remembers His mercy from generation to generation, a mercy that raises the lowly and fills them with good things so that She, the Mother of Mercy, can lead us to the Merciful Heart of Her Son.