With these words, we are invited into the season of Lent:
We begin our journey to Easter with the sign of ashes,On Wednesday Christians around the world began the Lenten season with the imposition of ashes. It was my third or fourth Ash Wednesday service - every year I am moved by the power and meaning behind the service. We came together as a community to confess our sins, to begin our penitent journey to Easter, to acknowledge our mortality.
an ancient sign,
speaking of the frailty and uncertainty of human life,
and marking the penitence of the community as a whole.
I invite you therefore, in the name of the Lord,
to observe a holy Lent,
by self-examination, penitence, prayer,
fasting, and almsgiving,
and by reading and meditating on the word of God.
Let us kneel before our Creator and Redeemer.
One by one, the sign of the cross was marked on our foreheads; with each person the priest told them:
Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.I heard these words spoken to each person. I saw each person marked with ashes. I saw their human frailty exposed and knew that they would each die one day - what day, none of us can say. I saw my dear wife marked with ashes and knew that she would leave me one day. One day in the future I would loose her, or she would loose me. Our children would weep at the loss of their parents. I would weep at the loss of my love, my wife. I was almost overcome with the thought of loosing my dear wife.
It was almost a dark, dark, service. But it is not. It is a service were the reality of human existence is spoken clearly and truly - there can be no pretending. We are to look death in the face. That is a difficult thing to do. We are asked, as a community, to walk in the valley of the shadow of death. But, fortunately, we do not walk alone. We travel that path with the rest of the Church, throughout all ages. We walk with the support and prayers of all the heavenly saints and martyrs. We walk in the footsteps of the crucified Lord, who traveled the path so long ago. And this is exactly why we can walk it without despair: our shepherd guides us; he knows the way; he will lead us beside still waters and, therefore, we need not fear evil. Therefore, we have hope because at the end of the road is the newness of the risen life.
As I tasted the offered Eucharist, as I knelt down before the sacrificial feast, I was that publican; it was I who, not able to life my eyes to heaven, cried, "have mercy on me a sinner". I tasted that mercy. I was given hope.
Lent is about setting things in order. It is about preparing to greet the risen Lord on that great Easter celebration. We wish to greet him with willing and ready hearts. Thus, we spend forty days re-learning the deeper truths of life. Christians do not fast because food is bad; we fast because food is good. It is good and ought not be abused, but appreciated accordingly. We pray because it is only in the seeking of the Lord that we will find him. We read the holy Scriptures because it is through the Holy Spirit working through them that our hearts and minds are transformed. We are penitent because we recognize our need for grace and mercy. We face the reality of death because it is only through the recognition of our mortality that we can rightly judge what is important in life. We ask ourselves for those forty days, "In light of our limited time here on earth, and our future glory in heaven... what is it that is important; what is it that is worth living for?"
Yes, we weep because the of the reality of our human condition - but how much more do we love because of that same condition and what it demands of us.
This Lent, let us consider what is truly important...
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