“Repent and believe in the Gospel.” This is the proclamation we will hear today on Ash Wednesday, on this first day of the holy season of Lent as we receive a smudge of ashes on our foreheads. The message of this proclamation is what Jesus asks of us today, to repent and to believe in the Gospel. Lent is a time of intense spiritual renewal for us as we prepare to celebrate the annual commemoration of the Paschal mystery of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. Lent is also a special time for the catechumens and candidates in our RCIA program, as they enter their final weeks of preparation for baptism or full-communion with us in our Catholic faith. It is a special time for our youth preparing for the sacrament of confirmation.
Ashes were used in Ancient Israel to symbolize mourning, mortality, and penance. People like Job in the Old Testament wore sackcloth and ashes to proclaim to the world their desire to repent. However, ashes are not just an outward sign. The ashes we will wear on our foreheads today are to symbolize what is going on in the inside. As the prophet Joel tells us, we are to return to God with our hearts, with prayers, weeping, and fasting. But we are not just to tear apart our outer garments. We are to have a change and repentance of heart in the interior of our lives.
Every year on Ash Wednesday, we priests are truly edified as we see the faithful come with sincerity and devotion to church as we start this penitential season. The faithful have a strong desire to come to church on Ash Wednesday, even though this day is not a holy day of obligation.
Pope Francis has said that Lent is to be a time that shakes us up out of our sleep and out of our complacency. And Pope Benedict XVI stated that Lent is to be a holy time that helps us live out the love of Christ in an ever more radical way in our daily lives. Let us feel God calling out to us today in a very special, profound way, to “repent and believe in the Gospel.”
This year during Lent we are going to honor the theme of gratitude, an important trait of our Catholic spirituality and a very Ignatian aspect of our faith. St Ignatius of Loyola, who was the founder of the Jesuits and who was born in the Basque Country of Spain in the 15th century, stated at the end of his spiritual exercises that ingratitude is the greatest sin we can commit, that ingratitude is at the root of all sins, certainly a very interesting insight. I hope you will join us in our Lenten observances this year at Holy Savior and Immaculate Conception. We will send out a Flocknote email each week during Lent our outline for the week, highlighting a Catholic devotion, providing insight on the Ignatian examen prayer, and giving a gratitude quote for each day. The quote I have for today Ash Wednesday is from the German mystic and Dominican priest Meister Eckhart, who was born in the middle of the 13th century: “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, that will be enough.” It is so important for us to be thankful on our journey of faith and in our prayers. If we are not thankful, if we do not show gratitude, we are missing a big part of what our faith is all about. Blessings to all of you as we begin our Lenten journey today.
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