Here is the reflection I prepared for the gathering of the faithful as we begin the liturgical Season of Lent.
Rising from the cinders
Turn away your face and they panic;
take back their breath and they die
and return to dust (Psalm 104:29).
Yesterday
morning, I attended two celebrations. The
first was at John XXIII-Corpus Christi school where parents of some of the children
were preparing pancakes and sausage to feed to the children. By the time I arrived, production was in full
swing: almost as quickly as the pancake batter was mixed, it seemed to make its
way to any one of a number of griddles where it was swiftly turned into golden
discs of deliciousness. At the same
time, sausages were being browned, and somewhere in the school, tables were
being set for the feast, but I never saw the tables because there was a second
feast that I needed to attend.
In another part
of the city, at Saint Luke’s school, similar efforts were being expended by
parents and volunteers in order to prepare for the luncheon that was to be served
at 11:30. In a rare adaptation of the
normal school-day schedule, rather than the students having separated lunch
periods, all of them were brought into the gymnasium where tables had been set
up, including place settings and juice boxes.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had the opportunity to stand in a room where
300 children are gathered, all of them eating lunch at once, but it’s quite an
operation. There’s a spirit of
celebration and play that is absolutely good for the soul, and before you know
it, all the pancakes have been eaten, and the children have returned to their
classes. All that’s left is a series of
sticky tables and dusty floors.
Each of us who is here tonight can also remember the ways in which we celebrated Shrove Tuesday, with a feast that was either intricate or extremely simple. One day after
those feasts have been completed, God’s children find ourselves once again
gathered in prayer. Following the
invitation issued by the prophet Joel, we have called this … assembly and
gathered the people. In this place, we assemble the aged and gather the
children today (cf Joel 2:16). Now
that the celebrations of Shrove Tuesday are behind us, the scriptures invite us
to hear once again the invitation of our loving God: return to me with all
your heart (Joel 2:12). This
invitation is issued out of love, but even so, our human senses are incapable of
perceiving it unless we stop what we’re doing and change our focus, take our
gaze away from the horizons we have been so keenly focused on until this
moment.
On a very
basic level, we are extremely dependent on our senses, so we change the colour
of the décor in the church from the green of Ordinary Time to the purple of Lent:
a more sombre colour which calls us to look within ourselves, to truthfully ask
ourselves how our relationship with God and with others is progressing and to listen
again for the loving call of God who has always wanted us to be his beloved
children. This is not an invitation to
be taken lightly. On this first day of Lent,
we hear the warning that is issued by Jesus to his disciples: Beware of practicing
your piety before people in order to be seen by them; for then you have no
reward from your Father in heaven (Matthew 6:1). As we prepare for the celebration of Easter,
it would be good for us to begin by taking stock of where we are right now.
This morning,
I asked the children from Saint Luke`s school who were here for Mass to tell me
about the story of Cinderella. They told
me that her step-mother bullied her; they told me that her mother made her do
the cooking and the cleaning, including the fireplaces. I asked them if they had ever had to clean
fireplaces. Many of them had no idea
about how dirty that job can be. Many of
them didn’t know until today that the word Cinderella is actually composed of
two words: Cinders (meaning ashes) and Puella (the Latin word for young girl). Father Ron Rollheiser, OMI was the first to point this out.
Cinderella is
actually a perfect image for us at the beginning of Lent. At the beginning of the story, she was
literally a girl covered in ashes. So it
is with us: at the beginning of Lent, we place ashes upon our bodies as a
reminder of our own mortality, as a reminder of our own need for forgiveness,
but as the season of Lent continues, we first recognize the fact that we must
all be humbled in the sight of our God.
Where we have stumbled in our efforts to follow in his footsteps, we
dare to do what we can to put things right again; if we have been deafened and
have no longer been able to hear God’s voice because we have surrounded ourselves
with other priorities, this is the time to set some of that noise aside in
order to allow our ears to be re-attuned to his voice; if we have neglected
opportunities to speak with him in prayer, here is our opportunity to begin
again; if we have neglected the needs of others who are our brothers and
sisters in faith, now is the time for us to renew our efforts to reach out in
love to those who are counting on us.
Together let us set out on this journey, making our way toward the
greatest of all liturgical celebrations: the Easter Triduum: the ultimate
celebration of the triumph of life over death, and the ultimate rising from the
ashes of human existence to the glory of the Resurrection.
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