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Good morning. Today is Ash Wednesday, one of the most solemn days of the church calendar, as many Christians begin Lent – the forty days (plus six Sundays) of preparation before we commemorate Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, Good Friday and Easter.

Many of us will go to church, where a priest will mark the sign of the cross on our foreheads, in ash made from palm branches blessed on Palm Sunday last year. We shall be told ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return’, and shall be exhorted ‘Repent, and believe in the Gospel.’

For Christians It’s a powerful symbol of human frailty, both physical and spiritual, and of our reliance on God’s forgiving, redeeming, saving, power.

Today is also the first of March, St David’s Day. The sixth century patron saint of Wales is in many ways a wholly appropriate saint for the days of fasting and penitence ahead.

He and his monks followed a rigorous and disciplined life, not just in Lent but all year round. Forbidden meat and beer, they drank only water, and ate bread with salt and herbs. Some accounts say David would often spend the night standing up to his neck in a cold stream, reciting Psalms – way beyond even the strictest Lent any of us are likely to follow!

More apt for us may be his death-bed admonition, to ‘Follow the little things that you have seen me do.’  This echoes Jesus’ words ‘One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.’

Taking small steps can help us build better habits – and the 40 days ahead give us time, we hope, to make them stick. 

Lord Jesus Christ, give us grace to be faithful in the little things, and so to follow a holy Lent. Amen