Feast + Fast - Holy Monday.

For each day of Holy Week, Christina Rees offers a reflection for our hearts and minds, and a recipe for a simple meal to nourish our bodies. All these recipes and many more can be found in her book Feast + Fast: Food for Lent and Easter.

Monday 6^th April 2020

We now enter the last week of Lent, the time that includes what has been called the ‘saddest and gladdest’ days of the entire Christian year – Good Friday and Easter. The forty days are nearly over but we still face the most harrowing week of all. Perhaps today is a good time for looking back and reflecting on our experience of Lent so far, before focussing on what lies ahead.

This year Ash Wednesday fell on my wedding anniversary. I had to get up and get out of the house bright and early to go to the lovely school in North Norfolk where I am the part-time chaplain. Being fairly new there, I had wondered whether to offer the imposition of ashes but decided perhaps it might not be considered appropriate for the children.

Once at school, I voiced out loud my hesitations to the head of music, who accompanies the hymns during assemblies. Immediately she said that she was sure the children would like to be offered the ashes. Not having come prepared, I improvised with a stick of charcoal hurriedly borrowed from the art room.

My colleague was right. After we sang Amazing Grace and everyone began filing out of the chapel, I made the sign of the cross on the foreheads of the children who paused and looked up at me - expectant, serious, some, of course, a little shy. During this simple, ancient ritual, time stood still, and charcoal became holy ash and we were all standing on holy ground.

Later that day I was told that one of the parents, a mother with two young sons, had tragically died the day before. It was a devastating shock. She had been much loved by many children, other parents and teachers alike. I had always enjoyed our snatched conversations at the end of services and at other school events. She, of all people, had been so full of life and had so much to live for.

That night, back at home after another assembly and a confirmation class, there could be no anniversary celebration. Just begun, Lent already felt heavy with the oppressive weight of death and grief.

Usually I fast during Lent, having been introduced to fasting when I was a young girl, a story I tell in Feast + Fast – Food for Lent and Easter, but this year I have only done intermittent fasting – going for perhaps 16 or 17 hours at a time without food, not for a day or more as I have done so often in the past.

Over the last few weeks, however, meals have become smaller, as the horror of COVID-19 has continued to spread and we have all been forced to shop less frequently. Each day this week I will include a recipe from Feast + Fast, simple food to nourish our bodies, as we dwell on the great changes taking place in our world, and on the humanity and mortality shared with us by Jesus, who we know now as the risen and ascended Christ.

RECIPE

Lentil and Tomato Soup
Contributed by SUE JAGELMAN

A simple and economical soup – you can double or even triple the quantities and freeze some.

Serves 4

4½oz/125g red lentils
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 stick celery, chopped
14oz/400g carton puréed tomatoes/passata or tin chopped tomatoes
chopped fresh parsley or fresh basil

Rinse the lentils well (soaking for half an hour helps the cooking time but is not essential).

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and gently fry the onion and celery for 5–10 minutes. When the onions have softened add the drained lentils and mix in to coat with oil. Add the puréed tomatoes/passata to the pan. Add another carton full of water and mix in well. Alternatively

use a tin of chopped tomatoes.

Simmer for about half an hour until the lentils are soft – don’t add seasoning at this stage. When cooked liquidise or use a hand blender and add seasoning to taste, This will give you a thick purée suitable for freezing or diluting with boiling water to your preferred consistency to serve. Garnish with chopped parsley or basil.