Easter arrives relatively late this year, so Holy Week (and our Holy Week supplement) begins on 13th April. Put your April issue somewhere safe though, as you’ll be returning to it on 21st. This means that within these pages we pass directly from the rigours of Passiontide to the joyful second week of Eastertime. As this juxtaposition can remind us, true joy often comes at a price: the price of sacrificial love.

By the time we get to this point in Lent we are likely quite tired (or tried, at least) by our penitential practices. If so, maybe we can shift those practices a little, and try to do something positive for someone else rather than just giving things up? To think about how others are experiencing life is sometimes a greater spur to holiness than staying self-absorbed. In love, after all, we are called to transcend ourselves.

Yours in the friendship of Christ,