I am going to try to post a little reflection
for each day of Lent in addition to my homilies for the week. I thought of this passage from the first
chapter of Mark as we give out ashes today: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus
came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’”
The words we proclaim as we receive the
smudge of ashes on our foreheads today harken back to this readings: “Repent
and believe in the Gospel.” Last week,
we had an interesting occurrence at our parish – the mega-church in town called
and asked us for ashes, saying that their church supply company had them
back-ordered and they would not come in time for Ash Wednesday. It is interesting that I had grown up in the
same denomination as this mega-church, and up until a few years ago, it would
have been unheard of for ashes to be distributed on Ash Wednesday in this
denomination. Yet, the symbolism of Ash
Wednesday is so strong that many Christians are flocking to this tradition,
even those denominations that have no such tradition themselves. To publicly repent and to follow Jesus’
call in the Gospel still reaches out to us today.
By the way, we did give that other church ashes to distribute. I wonder if they are going to tell the membership that the ashes came from the Catholic Church? (You have to get a chuckle out of that!)
No comments:
Post a Comment