Ash Wednesday

Lent can be conceived of as a type of pilgrimage, during which we are given the opportunity to assess our spiritual condition., a time to measure the progress we are making or intend to make during the next forty days. We begin our self-evaluation with ashes imprinted on our foreheads in the sign of the cross, a reminder or foreshadowing of  Calvary as the direction toward which we are moving; not the goal, but the means by which we achieve Lent’s goal: the experience of the Paschal mystery, reaching its climax at the resurrection on Easter Sunday. Each day during Lent the liturgy gives us specific scriptural readings which help to clarify the mystery of redemption, providing us with a better understanding of ourselves and of the sacrifice that has been made on our behalf.  Lent can also be a time when we deepen the knowledge of our faith and at the same time our relationship to God through a  host of diverse ways designed to help,  sustain and support us as we make our way back to Him from whom we may have strayed and perhaps at times to have felt that we have been abandoned and forsaken.

Ash Wednesday gives us a program that will sustain us spiritually for the whole of Lent  Admitting that we have, in varying degrees and innumerable ways, turned aside from God’s law and His commandments, we endeavor to turn back to Him with renewed fervor and determination.  through the traditional, heart-felt signs of repentance:  fasting, giving alms, and offering with sincerity the sacrifice of a contrite and humble heart through prayer. In  Joel and in Jonah we find recourse to sackcloth and ashes as a way of indicating inner conversion to  God who has been neglected or abandoned altogether. Joel advises the people to rend your hearts and not your garments with fasting, weeping and mourning. For the Lord, your God, is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment. And the Lord did have pity on the people and responded to their appeal.

The following is excerpted from a reflection on the USCCB website, written by Rev. Daniel Merz.

Christian fasting is revealed in an interdependence between two events in the Bible: the “breaking of the fast” by Adam and Eve; and the “keeping of the fast” by Christ at the beginning of his ministry… Humanity’s “Fall” away from God and into sin began with eating. God had proclaimed a fast from the fruit of only one tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17), and Adam and Eve broke it… At the beginning of his ministry in the Gospel of Matthew, we read, “When He had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, He became hungry.” Hunger is that state in which we realize our dependence on something else – when we face the ultimate question: “on what does my life depend?” …Christ said, “Man does NOT live by bread alone.” This liberates us from total dependence on food, on matter, on the world. Thus, for the Christian, fasting is the only means by which man recovers his true spiritual nature. In order for fasting to be effective, then, the spirit must be a part of it… Christian tradition can name at least seven reasons for fasting:

1. From the beginning, God commanded some fasting, and sin entered into the world because Adam and Eve broke the fast.
2. For the Christian, fasting is ultimately about fasting from sin.
3. Fasting reveals our dependence on God and not the resources of this world.
4. Fasting is an ancient way of preparing for the Eucharist – the truest of foods.
5. Fasting is preparation for baptism (and all sacraments): the reception of grace.
6. Fasting is a means of saving resources to give to the poor.
7. Fasting is a means of self-discipline, chastity, the restraining of the appetites.