Austin Farrer for the start of Lent...
"If there are any of you determined to live a more Christian life, there is one resolution you need to make which is, out of all proportion, more important than the rest. Resolve to pray, to receive the sacrament, to shun besetting sins, to do good works – all excellent resolutions; but more important than any of these is the resolution to repent. the more resolutions you make, the more you will break. But it does not matter how many you break, so long as you are resolute not to put of repentance when you break them, but to give yourself up to the mercy which will not despise a broken and contrite heart... it remains true [of us] that... in [our] natural being, there dwells no good thing. Saints are not [those] who store goodness in themselves, they are just [those] who do not delay to repent, and whose repentances are honourable. The saints have tried God's patience to the utmost, they have explored illimitable mercy."
(Austin Farrer, The Brink of Mystery, p. 17)
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