From the Pastor's Desk | February 18, 2024

Ash Wednesday and Lent

Today we begin our sojourn through the season of Lent, and we mark the start of this holy season by placing ashes on our foreheads.  If you look on the various social media platforms available, you will likely see a lot of people posting pictures of themselves with ashes on their foreheads.  This is one day in which it can be ‘trendy’ to be Catholic as we wear these visible signs of our faith very publicly.    

From a biblical perspective, however, dust and ashes have always represented the realization that something had gone wrong, that something is amiss, that our lives are not on the right trajectory.  Abraham spoke of dust and ashes when he interceded for the city of Sodom (Gen. 18:27).  During his misfortunes, Job spoke of being like dust and ashes (Job 30:19).  As Ezekiel lamented for the city of Tyre, he noted that they cast dust on their heads and wallowed in ashes (Ez. 27:30).  The king of Nineveh covered himself in sackcloth and sat in ashes when he received word of Jonah’s prophecy that Nineveh would be destroyed unless they repented of their sins (Jonah 3:6).  

The same holds true for us today.  As we place ashes on our foreheads, we do so with the realization that we need to change - our hearts need to change.  We are beginning this time of Lent to really take stock of our lives and ourselves.  God gives us this sacred gift of time - 40 days - to be both introspective and, at the same time, come out of ourselves as we pray, fast, and give alms.  

Prayer - Prayer should be the centrality of our daily living, even outside of Lent.  Our prayer during this season should, perhaps, be a little more focused.  It should be a time to enter more deeply into relationship with the Lord.  And, as we enter more deeply into this relationship, we are called to change.  Change is inevitable when we truly encounter Christ.  There are certainly things or aspects of our lives that need to be purified and made holy.  Our prayer during this season of Lent should be all the more focused on turning our heart, habits, and daily life toward Christ.  Our prayer during this season of Lent should be all the more focused on purifying our thoughts, feelings, and desires - those three movements of the heart which make us truly human.   
 
Fasting - Fasting is a sign of penance and repentance.  We fast to train our passions and appetites so that virtue becomes all the more possible and effortless within us.  We fast to learn self-mastery and self-control.  We fast to repent from our own sinfulness and selfish living.  Fasting is our own personal sacrifice and offering to God as we learn to rely all the more on Him and the grace that He is constantly providing, but that often goes unseen, ignored, or rejected outright.  Fasting helps us to see more clearly with the eyes of faith and less through the lenses of consumption and appetite.  

Almsgiving - Almsgiving is a privileged way to start living more for others and less for ourselves.  So often we walk through life thinking about nobody else but ourselves and our own desires.  Pope Benedict XVI, in a homily on the Solemnity of Immaculate Conception in 2005, said, “the more the human person gives himself, the more he finds himself. ...he becomes great, he becomes divine, he becomes truly himself.”  

Brothers and sisters, when judgment befalls us, and it surely will, I tend to think that the Lord will ask us one question - “How did you spend your time?”  In a very real sense, Lent should be lived everyday.  Let us enter into this season of Lent with great humility and sobriety, with the realization that we are sinful for indeed we are.  As we move through this most sacred time, let us press all the more into prayer, fasting, and almsgiving and in so doing press all the more into relationship with Jesus Christ living not for ourselves but for God and others.  

At the beginning of each Mass during the season of Lent we will pray together the Prayer to Jesus Christ Crucified which seems a fitting way end to this letter: 

Look down upon me, O good and sweetest Jesus, while before your face I humbly kneel.  Most fervently I pray and beg you to fix deep within my heart lively sentiments of faith, hope, and charity, true sorrow for my sins, and firm purpose of amendment.  With deep affection and sorrow I contemplate your five wounds.  I have before my eyes, O good Jesus, what David the prophet spoke of you, as though you were saying it yourself: "They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones" (Ps 22 [21]:17).  Amen. 
 
Know of my prayers for you all, especially during this season of Lent! 

Fr. Ryan