Patrick Comerford
We are coming to the end of this period of Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the beginning of Lent. Today is Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday or Mardi Gras (‘Fat Tuesday’), and Lent begins tomorrow with Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025).
The word shrove is a form of the English word shrive, which means to give absolution for someone’s sins by way of Confession and doing penance. Thus Shrove Tuesday was named after the custom of Christians to be ‘shriven’ before the start of Lent. Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 10: 28-31 (NRSVA):
28 Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ 29 Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions – and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’
Today’s Reflection:
Today’s Gospel reading (Mark 10: 28-31) follows immediately after the story we read yesterday of the man who runs up to Jesus, kneels before him, and asks, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ The man is told to go, sell what he owns, gives it to the poor, and only then follow Jesus. He ‘was shocked and went away grieving’ (see Mark 10: 17-27).
Jesus responds to this by telling the disciples: ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’ (verses 24-25).
Peter now tells Jesus that the disciples have left everything to followed Jesus. His implied question points out again how easy it is to think that being a disciple or follower of Christ should be linked with the hope of rewards in the here and now.
What do I cling onto most now that I can shed – not in terms of property and possessions, but prejudices and values – that get between me and Jesus, and between the way I live now and eternal life?
Then will I be happy to get down on my knees, like a camel, and squeeze into the City of God through the smallest and most narrow of the city gates, and find in the most humbling of ways how to squeeze into the Kingdom of God?
But, as Jesus says, ‘many who are first will be last, and the last will be first’ (verse 31).
I was never good at sports and athletics as a schoolboy. Nevertheless, I persisted. In the track and field events one year, I bravely entered a race in which all the runners were offered a handicap. I started first, and the most athletic boy of my year started last; in all there were six entrants. I started first, and finished last; the most athletic boy who started last, needless to say, came first.
At first, as boys day on days like that, I felt humiliated and embarrassed. No platitudes or clichés such as ‘God loves a trier’ or ‘playing not winning is what matters’ could console me.
It took me a long time to realise not that I had come last, but that I had come sixth. Apart from we six, where were the other boys in my year? They were on the sidelines watching; most of them had not even kitted out that day.
In my own gauche way, I continued to enter school sports, and as an adult still tried to play rugby and cricket occasionally. When I was selected, I was the player sent in to bat first, so that I could be dismissed immediately and everyone else could get on with the game.
But does it matter, being first or last?
In the Book of Revelation, almost at the beginning, we read, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty (Revelation 1: 8). He is the Alpha (A) and the Omega (Ω) – the A to Z, as we might say today – the beginning and end of all things, the first and the last, the Lord God Almighty who is, who was, and who is to come. And he says again, ‘Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last’ (Revelation 1: 17).
At the end of the Book of Revelation, Jesus says once again, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end’ (Revelation 22: 13).
At the end of this period of Ordinary Time and as Lent is about to begi, it is good to be reminded that it matters little whether I come first or last in the race. I ran. He is our ‘Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end’. He will soon return, bringing our reward:
‘Surely I am coming soon.’
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen. (Revelation 22: 20-21)
Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 4 March 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The World’s Greatest Leader: Jesus Christ.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Right Revd Filomena Tete Estevão, Bishop of Angola.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 4 March 2025) invites us to pray:
Lord, equip us all to live lives rooted in prayer. Help us to seek you daily, finding strength and direction in your presence, and cultivating hearts that are open to your guidance.
The Collect:
Almighty Father,
whose Son was revealed in majesty
before he suffered death upon the cross:
give us grace to perceive his glory,
that we may be strengthened to suffer with him
and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Holy God, we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ:
may we who are partakers at his table
reflect his life in word and deed,
that all the world may know his power to change and save.
This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Holy God,
you know the disorder of our sinful lives:
set straight our crooked hearts,
and bend our wills to love your goodness and your glory
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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