"Shriving" Away our Sins

Last weekend we went to Brussels for a cold wet weekend to visit Judith. She had just moved house at the beginning of the year, and we went to help her set up her room.

While there we decided to spend a day visiting good friends Roland and Carolien Smith who are working in Maastricht in the south of the Netherlands. It just so happened that it was also the main Day of the Carnival celebrations in the run up to the season of Lent. The first indication we got that things were not quite normal in this town of 120,000 was when we arrived and needed to ask directions to the Smith's house. A white rabbit and little Bo Peep were waiting for a bus at 10:30 in the morning. Other bleary eyed inhabitants in strange costumes were wandering through the town centre. The city already had one day of fun and revelry, was waking up to a second, and would continue through to Shrove Tuesday night. The word "shrove" is a past tense of the Old English verb "shrive," meaning to obtain absolution for sins through confession and penance – wiping away all of the excesses of these last few days of Carnival!!

In the afternoon we wandered down into the city centre to see the main square filling up with an amazing array of roman soldiers, cowboys and indians, knights in armour, rabbits, lions and monkeys. There were brass bands, samba bands and even a very Scottish looking pipe band complete with kilts – where it came from, I do not know. It was totally amazing to see a whole city turned out like that on a cold and wet afternoon, and yet the open air revelries would go on long into the night.

Carnival is also celebrated at various locations here in Portugal, and right across mainly Catholic Europe The origin of the Portuguese word seems to come from “carne-vale” meaning to say goodbye to meat, and, of course, the celebrations are associated with the last days of feasting before the period of austerity and fasting of the forty days of lent.

As Lent begins it is comforting to think that we don’t need to “shrive” away our sins through acts of penitence or austerity, because Jesus has done it all for us.
It's good to remember that:

There is nothing you can do to make God love you more. And there is nothing you can do to make Him love you less.

That's exactly what "Grace" means