Some thoughts for Ash Wednesday

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.