Shrove Tuesday

As we're on the eve Lent it makes sense, perhaps, to leave the bracing air of Valentine's Day bears and Lee Enfield projects behind, if only for a time.

Here's some Farrer to get the penitential spirit moving -- from The Crown of the Year.

"CHRIST broke his mysterious body and gave it to his disciples at the Supper without explaining at that time what the breaking and giving would mean. There was no need, the facts would presently make it clear. What, then, was done to this body? It was stripped, scourged, and nailed to a cross: stripped of all dignity and all possession, scourged with the stroke of penal justice, and nailed up like a dead thing while it was still alive. The body you receive in this sacrament accomplished its purpose by nailing to a tree. You are to become this body, you are to be nailed: nailed to Christ’s sacrificial will. The nails that hold you are God’s commandments, your rules of life, prayers, confessions, communions regularly observed. Let us honour the nails for Christ’s sake, and pray that by the virtue of his passion they may hold fast."

Serious business. 

LSP