This year, my attempt at Lenten discipline was a little more farcical than usual. I gave up tea and coffee, because I felt I was addicted to drinking cup after cup. For the first few days, I whinged on an hourly basis, subjecting my nearest and dearest to my acute sense of martyrdom.

Then things took a somewhat comical turn. I was sitting with a glass of Bailey's Irish Cream one evening, something I would normally never do. My son, who does a nice line in teasing, intoned: ''Ah, the sad tale of an Irish Catholic columnist who gave up tea and coffee and began a rapid descent into alcoholism instead!''

When I somewhat grumpily replied that I was only drinking it because I was gasping for a cup of tea, we both started to laugh at the incongruity of dropping tea in favour of alcohol.

So, I have now given up Baileys. And the whole episode made me reflect on what Lenten preparation is really about. Somehow, this Lent feels more important to me than other Lents of the past, and I wonder is it because we are waiting for the Pope's pastoral letter to the beleaguered Church?

Apologise

I know what I would like from the Pope's letter, whether or not it pleases the critics. I would like Benedict XVI's letter to first address survivors and their families, to apologise for any part that the Vatican played in prolonging their pain, even through omission, and then to address the underlying crisis of faith that currently afflicts much of the Church.

It annoyed many that the Pope referred to a weakening of faith in the Irish Church. However, I believe that the decline in faith is a crucial factor, because if people were living according to the example of Jesus, we would shrink from ever harming a child, or covering up the harming of a child.

There will always be evil in the world, including the evil of child abuse, but the closer we come to Jesus, the less likely we are to fall into the kind of self-deception needed either for abuse or failure to deal with abuse.

It feels like this Lent should be a season of renewal for the whole Church, a time of real repentance, and re-ordering of priorities. In many ways, the Catholic Church is desperate for a resurrection.

The sexual abuse of children by religious and clergy has left the Church in a battered, gasping state. But long before the scandals, the positive influence of all the Christian Churches was in decline. It is part of what Mircea Eliade calls a 'desacralisation', a word that means a decline in the ability to sense the sacred.

Mircea Eliade defines non-religious man as ''a man who rejects the sacrality of the world, who accepts only a profane existence, divested of all religious presuppositions''. Sacred space, sacred ritual, and sacred practice become more privatised, and less communal.

Thriving

Of course this is not true everywhere in Ireland, or for everyone. There are thriving communities where the sense of the sacred is nourished, but my sense is that the number of such communities is in decline.

The sad thing is that communities are also isolated from each other, and increasingly like little islands, unable to support and share with each other. For example, a parish may have a thriving family Mass, but there are few fora for sharing what works, and spreading positive experiences.

Jesus said that he came that we might have life, and have it to the full. How many people emerge from church on Sunday feeling lighter, more full of life, and inspired to love others? How many priests experience the consolation of an ever-deepening life of faith?

A church should be a community of deeply spiritual and committed Christians who support each other and work together to bring a message of hope to the rest of the world. I think of it like interconnecting circles, beginning in the heart of each person, and needing daily nourishment.

We never go to God alone - someone has influenced us or supported us or changed us. Together, living as a community, we can offer hope to the battered and the broken, including ourselves.

Grace

Philip Yancey, author of What's so Amazing about Grace, says that grace is the only thing that the Church can offer that the world cannot. Grace is such a beautiful word, redolent of forgiveness, and ease, and gentle compassion.

This Lent, I will continue to struggle on without tea or coffee (or Baileys!) but in the knowledge that what is really needed is to become more open to grace. As a Church, we need to don the sackcloth and ashes, but only in hopes of an Easter that floods us, and especially anyone harmed by our church, with grace.