2/18/2015 – Ash Wednesday – Joel 2:12-18

      “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”  This is what we hear proclaimed to us in a few short moments when we receive a smudge of ashes on our foreheads.   And that is what Jesus asks of us today, to repent and to believe in his Gospel.  Today we start the holy season of Lent, a time of intense spiritual renewal for us, the faithful, as we prepare to celebrate the annual commemoration of the Paschal mystery of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection. Lent is also a very 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.

        Ashes were used in Old Testament times to symbolize mourning, mortality, and penance.  People like Job in the Old Testament wore sackcloth and ashes to proclaim their desire to repent.  But the ashes are not just an outward sign – they symbolize what is going on in the inside.   As Joel tells us, we are to return to God with our whole hearts. We are to return to him with prayers and weeping and fasting.  But we are not just to tear apart our outer garments.  We are to truly have a change and repentance of heart.

        Every year on Ash Wednesday, we priests are truly edified as we see the faithful come so sincerely and devoutly to church today as we start this penitential season.  Today, you will all receive a black rubber wristband.   The color black of the wristband will remind us of the ashes we receive today.  The black wristband not only represent the contrition we feel in our hearts for our sins and our desire to repent, but will also be a reminder for us that God is gracious and merciful to those who call on Him with repentant hearts.  We will turn in our Lenten promise cards today.   Inscribed on our wristbands is the word SACRIFICIUM – the Latin word meaning SACRIFICE.  These wristbands will remind us and the world of the promises we are committing to during this Lenten season.   And indeed, it will take commitment and sacrifice and steadfastness to stay committed to our Lenten promises when we are tempted to break them or leave them behind.

       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 sees Lent as 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.”

2/22/2012 – Ash Wednesday - Joel 2:12-18, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 –

      This season of Lent – the special penitential season of preparation – calls out to us today.  We ourselves are “called to be Holy” during this holy season.  We are called to be holy on this day that we have ashes placed on our foreheads as a public sign of repentance.  We are called to be holy during the season of Lent as we recall and trace Jesus’ path of ministry, as we follow the footsteps of his passion, death, and resurrection, footsteps that bring to us salvation as the holy people of God.

     In today's first reading, the prophet Joel calls the people of Israel to a communal rite of anguish and repentance as a path toward hope in God.  Joel calls the people to repent with sackcloth and ashes, with prayer and fasting.  The priests and the leaders of the community, the elders and the infants – everybody joins in this ritual of repentance.       

     Joel tells us to rend our hearts, not our garments, to return to the Lord.  Perhaps this message gets to the heart of what we mean by signifying Lent as a season in which we are called to be holy. We are not to focus on the externals, but on how our hearts are being changed and converted on the inside.  There is a tension between our call to repent publically and Jesus’ admonition of being aware of practicing our piety before others in order to be seen by them, in perhaps taking pride in the way we express our remorse and repentance publically.  If we focus on the surface of the externals and the rituals, there is a danger that we will just go through the motions of repentance.  If we just go through the motions, this holy season will not be life-changing or transformative for us this year.

     We are called to holiness during this holy season of Lent not just individually, but also as a community. During Lent, we will all have daily devotional books in we can all pray together as a community.  We will have our traditional Wednesday evening soup suppers each week during Lent in which we will gather and journey together during this holy season.  We also will receive different symbols during our Lenten journey that will bond us together as a faith community.

     As we start our Lenten journey with Ash Wednesday, may we rend our hearts for personal reflection that will lead us to a season of confession, change, and renewal.  The trumpet is to be sounded in Zion, but not as a call that celebrates victory, not as a call that signals the advance to war, but rather a call that warns those who are penitent that the day of the Lord is coming.  Let us see beyond the smudge of ash that is placed on our foreheads to the smudge that exists in our hearts.  May this journey that we start on Ash Wednesday through this holy season bring our repentance from the shadows into substance, from ritual into reality, from a facade into faith.  May we journey together as a community during Lent in our call to greater holiness.