Homily for Ash Wednesday
18 February 2015
18 February 2015
Here
we are once again. The great season of Lent is upon us.
As
the prophet Joel reminds us, this is the time for us to “rend [our] hearts . .
. and return to the Lord.” And Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that this is done
through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
The
rending of our hearts is the beginning of the great conversion that you and I
need to be struggling with this Lenten season. The “how” of our rending is
through our prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
Lent
is our annual God-given opportunity to re-focus our lives back to the Lord and
our neighbor, and taking the focus off of ourselves. Our prayer should always
assist us in decreasing our prideful ways and, in humility, allow both the love
of God and of neighbor to fill our hearts.
Our
fasting shouldn’t be simply giving up something that we like, just to pick it
up again after Easter. Our fasting should come from the deepest struggles from
our hearts. What we fast from during this Lenten season shouldn’t be the
chocolate or coffee or beer that we abstain and fast from year after year.
Rather, we need to abstain and fast from those sins which keep us separated
from God and our neighbor. We need to abstain and fast from those decisions in
our lives which allow us to remain far from the love of God. If we struggle
with addictions or sins of alcohol, drugs, pornography, gluttony, anger, sloth,
lust, gossip, envy, pride or anything of the like, then these are the
preoccupations and obsessions of the heart that our Lord wishes for us to
abstain from, for this is how turn our hearts back to Him.
Our
almsgiving, or works of charity, then become for us an extension of our love of
God and neighbor. They are the physical and concrete ways in which our
conversion is shown. And this is more than just throwing money toward a charity
– which is still a good and just action, by the way. It’s offering a smile or
doing a good deed toward those who irritate us. It’s holding our tongues and
not speaking ill of someone who has done us wrong. It’s walking away in silence
when someone wants to fight us with either words or punches.
Rending
our hearts means that we tear them apart so that the Lord can heal them. We
return, we turn back to the Lord simply because we are wounded and are in need
of healing. Conversion of heart is that which we practice this Lenten season
not just because we are sinners in need of God’s mercy, but because we know
that the only way we will become more like Christ is by turning our hearts back
to Him.
It
is at this moment, then, that we accept the invitation of Christ to follow Him
into the desert, to face our physical and spiritual mortality, and rend our
hearts so that the Lord may heal them.
The
ashes we receive today are a reminder that as we rend our hearts in this great
and solemn – yet, joyful – season of Lent, we join our sufferings to the Cross
of Jesus Christ, so that our prayer, fasting and almsgiving may allow us to
remain faithful to the call of the Gospel.
For,
behold, today is the day of our salvation.
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Enjoy the journey . . .
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