Here, for Shrove Tuesday, is part of Seamus Heaney’s poem, ‘Station XI’: ‘As if the prisms of the kaleidoscope / I plunged once in a butt of muddied water / Surfaced like a marvellous lightship / And out of its silted crystals a monk’s face / That had spoken years ago from behind a grille / Spoke again about the need and chance / To salvage everything, to re-envisage / The zenith and glimpsed jewels of any gift / Mistakenly abased … / What came to nothing could always be replenished’.

As we enter upon Lent, let us do so in hope and faith and love, seeing here the ‘need and chance to salvage everything’ … may God bless you in all your endeavours, and bring you much joy.