Brought up in a Socialist household, he embraced Communism in his 20s and was appointed Moscow correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in the 1930s. His communist ideas soon dissipated with the reality of the Stalinist regime. He was one of the first journalists who courageously revealed the extent of the enforced Famine in the Ukraine in the 30s in which millions died(over against the New York Times correspondent who emphatically denied it). In World War 11 he served as a spy and after the war returned to journalism. He was a celebrated agnostic of his day and cynical about all things spiritual. You can imagine the outrage when he converted to Christianity in the 60s and wrote a remarkable and influential book, “Jesus Rediscovered” in 1969 in which he wrote about seven significant Christians. In the 1970s he is most remembered for his documentary and book on Mother Theresa of Calcutta as a result of which he and his wife became Roman Catholics.

Today I particularly wish to recall a television documentary Muggeridge made sometime in the 70s (those far off days I was thinking about yesterday as I celebrated 38 years of my priesting and today as I reflect on 39 years as a deacon). Muggeridge chose as his topic a Pilgrimage to Lourdes, the famous French site of a visitation by Our Lady and consequently a place of pilgrimage and especially a center of healing. In the documentary Muggeridge joined some English pilgrims, a group of Roman Catholics many of whom had particular ailments, some being in wheel chairs, some on canes, as they journeyed to Lourdes by train, ferry and train. To say that Muggeridge set out on the journey in a rather cynical frame of mind is the understatement of the century. Muggeridge had had the reputation as the Christopher Hitchens of his day. He could smell cant and hypocrisy a mile off.

But the remarkable thing about the documentary apart from the reality of journey and Lourdes itself was the effect the sheer faith and trust of the pilgrims in the Love of Christ had on Muggeridge himself. In the end he had to admit that he had been deeply moved by the process of the journey. He had begun wanting to debunk the miraculous; to poke fun at the piety and religious hoopla of a place like Lourdes. But he finished being converted by the simple and beautiful faith of the pilgrims; by their deep and abiding trust in the promises of God and his Christ; by the joy they found in celebrating with other pilgrims both on the journey and at Lourdes. For Muggeridge all that far outweighed his desire for rationality of the whole Lourdes phenomenom; the desire to find proof of actual healings and the like. On the home journey with the pilgrims he simply witnessed and marveled at the love, peace and joy that they all experienced.

I share this rather long introduction to illustrate some very basic truths about Lent. Lent is not about proving anything about God. Rather it is about remembering who God is and what God has done and trusting in God’s promises, in his loving purposes for us. Today’s readings are all about that. The gift of the first fruits to God by the ancient Israelites is a fundamental act of trust in God’s promise to provide. It is made on the basis of that famous call to remembrance: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor” in which salvation history is recounted; how God brought his people through their wanderings in the wilderness; how he fed them and watered them and finally brought them to the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey.

St Paul reminds the Romans that faith is not about testing God’s faithfulness and love (“who will ascend into heaven?” or “who will bring Christ down?”). But rather he says God’s word is “near you, on your lips and in your heart” so that “when you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

And at the heart of all three temptations of Jesus in the wilderness is the same temptation to put God’s promises to the test. Each temptation (be it over food, worldly power or jumping off the temple pinnacle) the devil tries to trick Jesus into testing God’s faithfulness. But Jesus resolutely stands his ground giving straight scriptural answers concluding with the basic truth, “do not put the Lord your God to the test”. Jesus’ victory over the devil lies in his abiding trust in God, a trust we see exhibited again in Gethsemane (“Father not my will but yours be done”) and later on the Cross (“Father into your hands I commit my spirit”). The latter are the ultimate acts of trust in God’s love and faithfulness: that Life does come out of Death; that good does triumph over evil; that the pain, the struggle, the anxiety and fear and suffering of this life are not the last word.

And so briefly those insights may help us to take a fresh look at our Lenten disciplines whatever they may be. What disciplines you take on for Lent, be they fasting, prayer, self denial and almsgiving, self examination and repentance, or reading and meditating on God’s Word; do not see them as ways of testing God (“God if you really love me you will reward me for giving up alcohol for Lent”; or “if I go to church regularly and attend Stations every Friday God will surely bless me”) but rather as an act of deepened trust in the God who does provide, who does bless us, who loves us so much that he gave his only Son for us. So like those Israelites in the first reading our giving, be it our regular pledge or our almsgiving which is over and above that; our giving is a sign of our deep trust in God’s providence. So also with our fasting and abstinence: do not take them on to prove anything but rather simply as a reminder that God does feed us as he fed us long ago in the Wilderness and continues to feed us with the Body and Blood of his Son.