Ash Wednesday is an important day for us in the Catholic Church. Even though Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the holy season of Lent, is not a holy day of obligation. But it is a day when Catholics want to come to Mass, to show their desire to change, to repent, and to renew their lives. For us priests, it is one of the busiest days of the year for us. In fact, I have six Masses today, with Masses at St Joseph High School, the state prison in Pearl, and Millsaps College, in addition to the three Masses I have at my parish of St Jude.
In the book of Joel in our first reading today, the prophet speaks out in a time of great tragedy and danger. Their land has been ravaged by a plague of locusts that has destroyed their crops. There is a severe drought in the land. The people wonder how they can survive. Joel tells the people that they have brought this disaster upon themselves due to their lack of faith in God. He tells them that they must repent their ways. But he does not tell them that they need to make a public display of remorse that was common in the Jewish tradition, of tearing apart their garments. Rather Joel tells them that they need to repent in their hearts. This holy season of Lent calls us to look into our hearts and to see the way we need to change our lives. Lent is about becoming, doing, and changing. It is about opening up ourselves to a newness of life. To renewal. To transformation.
Our holy season of Lent in the Church calls us to three disciplines. The first is prayer. We are to look at our prayer life in a special way during Lent. One of my favorite Lenten prayers is the Stations of the Cross. I want to encourage all of you to pray the Stations of the Cross on Fridays during the Lenten season, marking the day of the week that Jesus died on the cross. Many parishes have stations on Fridays during Lent. By praying the Stations of the Cross, we reflect upon Jesus’ passion and journey. We look at the ways Jesus is calling us to change and convert as we look into our own hearts. We are also called to make sacrifices and to give things up. Perhaps it is a special food, or Facebook, or playing video games, something you like doing that is definitely a sacrifice to give up. A third thing we can do is to reach out to others in a special way or to take on special works of charity. At St Jude, we are trying to collect clothing or other items for prisoners that they will need when they are released from prison. Some people put coins in a rice bowl collection box that will help fund projects at Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services. What you choose to do during Lent is up to you. The point is, to make this season a meaningful time in your life of faith, a time when you look at your life and enact ways to renew and transform. To make changes not that will take affect during these 40 days in preparation for the commemoration of Holy Week and Easter, but changes that will have long lasting affects on our journey of faith. My prayer for all of you during this Lenten season is that you truly feel yourself accompanying Jesus on his journey of his passion, the cross and the resurrection.
No comments:
Post a Comment