Ashes prepared for the Ash Wednesday Mass (2025)

Well, here we are on Ash Wednesday 2025. It’s Lent again. Only 45 days to prepare for Easter! How will your Lent be? Will it motivate you to celebrate Easter with enthusiasm? St. Benedict says in his Rule that monks should look forward to Lent. They should celebrate, not just observe Lent – with joy. His understanding was that monks should be the best possible Christians, so by extension that happiest of times should apply to every Christian. Muslims, who just began Ramadan, look forward to their month of fasting and truly celebrate it with joy. Will you have a joy-filled Lent? If we are like most Christians, including most monks, we miss this joy. We are task oriented. We think: “What should I give up for Lent?” Or: “What am I going to do during Lent?” Or maybe we think: “How can I get out of it?”

So to do Lent right, we should know what is Lent for. And what happens afterwards, after Easter. Lent began as a time for Christians to support and accompany in preparation those persons about to be baptized at the Easter vigil, those persons who had experienced conversion, who were changing their lives permanently for the better. It was a time for those already Christians to examine their own lives and to do the things necessary to correct their own habitual faults so their lives would better conform to the model of Christ, each and every day after Easter, so they would be in reality who they said they were. They understood that their entire life was a continual process of conversion, of changing and growing more like Christ. Easter was a big celebration because it was about the resurrection of their own selves just as much as it was about the resurrection of Jesus. They were result oriented. Wouldn’t it be great if we could be like that, if we could celebrate that?

We ought to ask ourselves today as we think not just about Lent, but about Easter, and our lives lived in love of God and neighbor: What should I do differently? What should I stop doing and what should I start doing? The ashes we receive today symbolize doing things differently. One thing may be to pray differently. When we pray we tend to talk a lot, use lots of words, like we’re trying to convince God of something, how much we love Him or what we want or what we’re thinking. That’s good. That how we talk to our children, parents and friends. In Chapter 20 of his Rule, St. Benedict says: “We must know that God considers our sincerity of heart, not our many words. Therefore prayer should be short and pure.” But he is clear, prayer should be frequent.
Tabernacle and altar servers’ prie-dieux in LentIn fact we should pray ALWAYS! When you come back from spring break, consider that this church is open 24/7 and that God is present here 24/7. He would be happy to see you here. In prayer, we don’t usually spend enough time listening. We don’t give God the opportunity to speak back. He is polite and won’t interrupt us. So we have to be quiet, take the time to relax in His loving presence, give Him space, and listen. Listen carefully. God loves to surprise us. Let’s give him the opportunity this Lent.

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Abbot Michael Brunner, OSB, is the superior of Portsmouth Abbey. He also serves as the Director of Spiritual Life for Portsmouth Abbey School. He offered this homily on March 5, 2025, to the School community gathered for Ash Wednesday Mass.