CEPHAS 2025 is delighted to partner again with the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst, for their annual course which this year will explore the nature and understanding of God across Christianity and Islam, with a study of Aquinas’ synthesis of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Participants will stay in the new dedicated retreat centre Theodore House, in the tranquil and beautiful surroundings of the Stonyhurst estate.

So, we have reached Laetare Sunday: the midpoint of Lent when, traditionally, the Church bids us relax a little and rejoice. And, if I am tempted to feel that in my case there is not much to rejoice about precisely because my observance of Lent so far has been all too relaxed, help is at hand in the form of  a play on words that suggests there is still time to get things back on track before Easter – after all, better Laetare than never. But it’s a serious point: and perhaps this truly terrible pun is for life, not just for Lent.

Sr Ann Swailes preached this sermon at evensong in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, on March 9th 2025. What are you doing for Lent? It’s an obvious question just now, but for some of us perhaps also an unsettling one. Maybe we are anxious that we haven’t yet chosen what to give up or take up this year – if that’s you, I have one – tentative - suggestion at the end of this reflection. But more profoundly, perhaps we are guiltily aware that we can’t quite see the point of Lent, or doubtful that anything good or healthy can come from it.

The Our Father, among other things, is a snapshot of the Incarnation, a mini-Gospel.  Christ, on earth hallows, or ‘glorifies’ the Father, sometimes explicitly in words, as when in St. John’s Gospel we hear Him say ‘Father, glorify your name’(Jn 12.28), and sometimes by accomplishing the work on

 Today we are looking at the third petition of the Our Father, ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ As it says in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, ‘In the Our Father, the object of the first three petitions is the glory of the Father: the sanctification of his name, the coming of the kingdom, and the fulfillment of his will. the four others present our wants to him: they ask that our lives be nourished, healed of sin, and made victorious in the struggle of good over evil.’(CCC 2857)