Extreme Lent: Week 1

The penitent St Jerome beating himself up with stones

Day 1 (Ash Wednesday): It is the first day of Lent. 'Remember, O man, that from dust you came and to dust you shall return.' Taking heed of these words, you gather dust from around your house. You keep a small collection of it on your desk at work and some in your pocket so that every now and then you can fiddle with it during the day in rememberance of the brevity of life and your mortality. You attend the Holy Day of Obligation with piety and awe. Ash Wednesday is a day of Fasting and Abstinence and so it is a lunch of thinned gruel or vegetable soup, if you are feeling indulgent, with a bread crust for lunch and a dinner of sardine delight. It is a day of weeping and mourning both for your sins and for the fact that you've gone and imposed upon yourself 40 days of extreme self-mortification.

Day 2: Lent is a period of time spent in the spiritual wilderness. It is a time to devote yourself to overcoming your sins with prayer, fasting and almsgiving. You decide to turn your house into that wilderness to remind yourself that you are combating self-indulgence and the passing vanities of this World. This is extreme Lent, remember, so you call a house clearance firm instructing them to remove all of your worldly possessions from the house, asking them to sell it all and to give all the money raised to the first beggar they encounter. You now own nothing but the clothes you stand in and your passport. You have freed yourself from the shackles of the material World and are ready to become incredibly bored and spend the next 38 days twiddling your thumbs.

Day 3: Although your house is now desolate, you long to recreate the sense of the desert. You order 3 tonnes of sand from Travis Perkins and with a shovel cover every inch of your floor, turn the heating up to maximum, paint your ceiling sky blue, and swelter in your very own wilderness, eating nothing but fragments of a cactus which you have bought from B&Q. You have asked the Water board to cut off your water supply and are dehydrated, but are comforted by mirages of the Saints and Holy Angels egging you on.

Day 4: Your life of constant interior prayer is intensified by the fact that there is absolutely nothing else to do. Yet unholy distractions will come your way and you suffer your first spiritual defeat in the battle, when, under severe temptation, you leave the life of prayer for an hour and build a miniature city of sand castles formed by spit, tears of penitence and the work of your own hands. It is a work of sublime genius and your have become master of an entire civic civilisation, complete with an elaborate tram network and town hall. Overcome with contrition at your vanity you spend another hour kicking it to pieces and return to your cell to beg the Lord for mercy.

Day 5: The life of solitude can be too much to bear and inspired by the Holy Spirit, you find the joy of companionship when you spot a spider in the corner of your lounge. Having forgotten your own selfish needs you open the window for a while to allow small flies to enter, lest the spider go hungry. They enter by the hundreds because you emit a bizarre body odour. Purified in spirit by prayer and mortification you rejoice in the happiness of the spider who has had his fill of flies. To the survivors you preach your first sermon on the love of God. They rejoice in your growing holiness and virtue and by sign of their gratitude to God, formation fly into a Cross before your eyes. You spend the rest of the day weeping for joy at the gracious love of your Saviour.

Day 6: Friends and work colleagues are concerned and wonder where on earth you have gone, and you have hitherto ignored all calls on the door enquiring of your whereabouts. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, you open the door to one work colleague. He is a worldly soul and still immersed in the fleeting pleasures of this earthly existence and asks if you fancy a pint down the local. Idle chatter, however, you have renounced as part of your extreme Lent so you tell him that you would love to talk to him but you have taken a vow of silence. He says, "Really?" You say, "Yes, absolutely. In fact, I've never been so sure of anything in my life. Silence is the interior route to God, you know, a mystical ladder by which we ascend..." He remains at your door for an hour while you tell him all about the wonderful benefits of your vow.

Day 7: Word of your hermit existence has spread throughout the town and locals gather outside of your window asking for spiritual advice. Many have brought you bread and water, concerned that you are not eating properly at all and are worried your extreme Lent could end tragically. You turn away all offers of help telling the crowd that there is enough moss and rainwater in the gutter outside your bedroom window to last you a whole lifetime and that the Lord in His Providence has provided for all your needs. From your lounge window you introduce the crowd to your new spider friend and tell them that if we are to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven we must be as reliant and dependent on God for our needs as the humble spider. The crowd, astonished by your life of mortification and love for God go home and lock themselves in their houses, sell all they own and sit in their lounges surrounded by a gigantic web structure of sellotape and wait for the Lord to provide for their necessities in their new life of Chrisitan holiness.