Charles Simeon

I remember years ago - when I was an undergraduate - that I had decided to give up on religion. The church seemed like a place for old people who wanted to argue, it had no heart,I rallied to myself, no enthusiasm. So I stopped going. I cannot remember when I started this protest, and in reality I suspect it was about the length of Lent - so a real wilderness - but I can remember when I finished it and that was at the Vigil on Easter Eve - which year I am not sure.

I found myself walking past the church whilst the Vigil was going on (hmm - serendipity??) and decided that once and for all I was going to prove to myself what junk this whole thing was. So I managed to be grumpy during several vigil readings and whatever else was going on - that is until the point where Gloria - which is absent for all of Lent - returned with great aplomb. My liturgical language from many years told me that Jesus was risen - but this was no trick of memory - I felt it - I knew it was true and my rebellion as simply non-sensical in the sense that a far greater truth had re-presented itself to me.

This experience has stayed with me - this encounter with Christ. I wonder how much more someone like Charles Simeon - who did not have the language and experience which I did - was bowled over by the sheer magnitude of the promise of salvation. He had been oppressed by the thought of his own sin for a while and then realized - whilst thinking about sacrifice in the Old Testament - that everything was OK - that Jesus had done this for him.

He lived and worked in one parish in Cambridge for his whole ministry - but the sheer length and conviction of this ministry is amazing. In an age where the Church was against enthusiasm in religion he proclaimed a faith which was outreaching and all-embracing.

Let's not forget that enthusiasm which sprung, I am sure, from such a vivid encounter with salvation, with the offer of forgiveness from God. Sometimes when we are plodding along in our faith it seems hard to think that there is such a vivid splash of experience to be had - but there really is - we cannot demand it, we cannot schedule it but when God comes to us in those moments of truth, we can be grateful and we can live as those convicted by a greater truth than our own mediocre holding on.