ASH WEDNESDAY; 17th FEBRUARY

 ASH WEDNESDAY; 17th FEBRUARY

The season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday – a day of public penance, in which the community as a group wear the symbols of mourning, the ashes, on our foreheads.

In the Mass, the priest places the mark of the Cross on our foreheads, saying (Genesis 3, 19):

"Momento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris".

"Remember man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return".

Ashes are an ancient biblical sign of repentance for our sin, remembering our mortality and praying for others- uniting our intense time of prayer in drawing closer to God by detaching ourselves from the pleasures of this world. The Jews of the time of Christ would undertake public penance by the wearing of sackcloth and covering themselves with ashes, (see Daniel 9, 3. Maccabees 1, 3, 47. Ester 14, 1-3).

The ashes are symbolic of public penance and repentance - that of a penance undertaken by the community as a group. In this, we are united in our communal repentance for our own personal sins and the sins of our society, in seeking mercy from God. We tie this public act of repentance with the other commitments of Lent, the private acts of repentance and penance.

The Lesson for the Ash Wednesday Mass is from Joel, 2, 12-19, a reading about a public fasting and penance:

“Thus saith the Lord: Be converted to Me with all your heart, in fasting and weeping and in mourning. And rend your hearts and not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God: for He is gracious and merciful, patient and rich in mercy, and ready to repent of the evil. Who knoweth but He will return and forgive and leave a blessing, sacrifice and libation to the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Sion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather together the people, sanctify the Church, assemble the ancients, gather together the little ones and them that suck at the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth from his bed and the bride out of her bride-chamber. Between the porch and the altar the priests, the Lord’s ministers, shall weep and shall say: Spare, O Lord, spare Thy people: and give not Thine inheritance to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them. Why should they say among the nations: Where is their God? The Lord hath been zealous for His land and hath spared His people. And the Lord answered and said to His people: Behold I will send you corn and wine and oil, and you shall be filled with them: and I will no more make you a reproach among the nations: saith the Lord Almighty.”

Brant Pitre describes the liturgical exercise as follows:

"The purpose of the fast is for the people to come back to God. By placing this reading on Ash Wednesday, the Church is calling to the people to come back to God.

Ash Wednesday is a day of external signs– God does call for the external signs – He has just commanded us to “sanctify a fast” in “fasting and weeping and in mourning”. But the Church asks for, not just an external sign, but an internal conversion, to ‘Be converted to Me with all your heart,” to “rend our hearts and not [our] garments] and turn to the Lord [our] God”.

The Church then gives us a blue print in how to undertake this conversion of Lent: we have spiritual practices to perform. The Ash Wednesday Gospel is from the Sermon on the Mount, (Matthew 6, 16-21), in which Christ instructs us as to the private acts of repentance and conversion which we are called upon to undertake:

1. We pray: A disciple of Jesus is supposed to be someone who regularly prays – Christ takes this practice as a given, but says, “don’t just do it in public” – go into your little room and take on private prayer.

2. We fast: “When you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad”. That is, fast in secret and do not undertake the fasting publicly – it is a practice that is between you and God. The Rule of St Benedict is to abstain from food during the day and to take a small collation at 3pm, the time of Nones, then to take a small meal at dinner time. The total consumption of food for the day is equal to that of a small meal. We fast throughout Lent, with two specific days of abstinence and fasting, Wednesday and Friday, in which we abstain from meat. We also have the Ember Days of Lent, which are days of abstinence and fasting.

3. We give alms to the poor: “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth” – and we do so in secret.

That is, we are not to do righteous acts in order to be seen by other people. We can become spiritually prideful. We must do it privately, in secret. In this respect, the private acts of penance during Lent are distinguished from the public act of repentance of Ash Wednesday. And yet, Christ explicitly tells us to do these practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. They are expected of a disciple of Christ, they are the foundation of discipleship.

During the Lenten period, we intensify our regular prayer, fasting and almsgiving, as little sacrifices we undertake for our love for God. The reason we do it is because Jesus did it Himself in the desert.

Matthew Ch 4, 1-11:

1. Then Jesus was led of the Spirit into the desert, to be tempted of the devil.

2. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.

3. And the tempter approached and said to Him: If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

4. Who answered and said: It is written, Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.

5. Then the devil took Him up into the holy city and set Him upon the pinnacle of the Temple and said to Him:

6. If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down, for it is written: That He hath given His angels charge over Thee, and in their hands shall they bear Thee up, lest perhaps Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.

7. And Jesus said to him: It is written again: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord Thy God.

8. And again, the devil took him up into a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,

9. And said to Him: All these I will give Thee, if Thou wilt adore me.

10. Then Jesus saith to him: Begone Satan: for it is written: “The Lord Thy God shalt Thou adore, and only Him shalt thou serve.”

In this period of fasting for forty days in the desert, Jesus was undoing the three temptations of the Fall. Genesis Chapter 3 provides that the serpent, the devil, “was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth”. The tempter played upon the pride of Eve and the resentment and jealousy that accompanies it: “Why hath God commanded you that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?”

The devil rebuked her obedience to God, manipulated her potential for suspicion and cynicism and tempted her pride:

"5 For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

6 And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold. And she took of the fruit thereof and gave it to her husband who did eat."

Eve and Adam took the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge because of three of our human characteristics that we are called to reign in, pride, love of possessions, (acquisitiveness), and the desire for pleasure, things which can be good in themselves but which, if they are not disciplined, can control us and to which we can become enslaved.

We have, as the consequence of our fallen nature, concupiscence – a tendency to default to aspects of our nature, which are reflected by the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge:

1 It tasted good, it was pleasurable (the pleasures of the flesh);

2. It was a delight to the eyes, it looked good (St John – the Lust of the eyes – the desire to possess);

3. It was said by the tempter to enable knowledge of good and evil, to become "like gods"; Ambition to possess all knowledge and thus to use our knowledge control life, to be our own gods, (what St John calls the pride of life).

These are the three temptations that we are all called to face: pleasure, possessions and pride – acquisitiveness/ love of money or things; pleasures of the flesh - sex/self-indulgence/dissoluteness, gluttony, slothfulness or debauchery; power/self-centredness and the abuse of power.

These three temptations lie at the root of all human sinfulness.

Jesus went out into the desert for forty days and forty nights. He did battle with all three of these temptations – the temptation to pleasure - the bread; the temptation of possessions - to possess all the kingdoms of the world; and the temptation to pride or vanity - to prove that He is the son of God. And unlike Adam who falls for the temptations, Jesus overcomes the temptation of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the temptation of pride.

And the important thing to note is that, in regard to each of the temptations put to Him by the devil, Jesus responds with: “It is written”, quoting from Scripture. That is, each time, in response to the temptations put to Him by the devil, Jesus overcame the temptation, not with strength or pride, but by humility - by complete submission to the Word of God. That is the submission with which we are called to comply.

So, this Ash Wednesday we ask ourselves: How am I going to pray more, fast more and give alms to the poor, to make my prayer life more meaningful so that I can overcome the sins with which all of us are beset?

We focus on our own tendencies, the sins with which we are particularly subject and we submit ourselves completely to the Word and the Sacraments in humility.

Lent is the time for reconciliation to God – to go to confession, to pray, to grow in holiness so that we can grow in our love of God in order to celebrate more fully the eternal life in the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

This post is taken from a lecture given by Dr Pitre.