Ash Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Joel 2: 12-17 Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18
To the church in the diaspora[1]
and to the church of the unchurched[2]
First reading from the prophet Joel
Even now, says the Lord, repent sincerely, and return to me with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments. Return to the Lord, your God. For gracious and merciful is He, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment….
Blow the trumpet on Mount Zion! Proclaim a fast and call an assembly! Gather the people and prepare them for a sacred meeting! Assemble the elders, children and infants! Even the newly weds must leave their homes and come. The priests, serving the Lord between the altar and the entrance of the Temple must weep and pray, “Have pity on your people, Lord. Do not let other nations despise us and mock us saying, `Where is your God?`”
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew.
Glory to you, Lord.
Jesus said to his disciples: Take care not to perform righteous deedsin order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.----------------
Introduction
Changing the liturgical clock
With Ash Wednesday (February 6, 2008) we exit Ordinary Time and enter into the Extraordinary Time of Lent in preparation for Easter (March 23, 2008).
How we got Lent and Ash Wednesday
The gospels recount how Jesus was led into the desert by the Holy Spirit, where he fasted and prayed for forty days and nights. That forty day ordeal which ends with the Devil tempting Jesus three times is always recounted on the first Sunday of Lent in all three liturgical Cycles of A, B and C (Mt. 4:1-11; Mk. 1:12-13; Lk. 4:1-13). In honor of that forty-day fast and prayer of Jesus, the church in the Council of Laodicaea (360 A.D.) prescribed a forty day penitential season in preparation for the feast of Easter. That’s how we got the season of Lent.
Counting back forty penitential days from Easter (Sundays not included) [3] gives us a Wednesday as the opening day of Lent. In the course of time the church created a little ceremony to initiate the Lenten season. She took the old palms from the past Palm Sunday, burned them down to ashes and smudged the foreheads of the faithful with the ashes, admonishing them to remember that they are dust and unto dust they shalt return. That’s how we got Ash Wednesday.
Other Lenten trivia
It’s an interesting bit of Lenten trivia to note that the only word Latin has for Lent is "Quadragesima," and that simply means forty. The only word Italian has for Lent is "Quaresima," and that simply means forty. The only word Spanish has for Lent is “Cuaresma,” and that simply means forty. In those languages Lent is simply “the season of the forty” -- the forty days Jesus spent praying and fasting in the desert.
Here is more Lenten trivia: The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday is called Mardi Gras. In French Mardi means Tuesday and gras means gross or fat. In the old days, on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday people stuffed themselves with food and especially with meat before the onerous forty-day period of fasting and abstaining. That’s how we got Mardi gras (Fat Tuesday). And when the sun began to set on Fat Tuesday the faithful cried out, “Carne vale!” In Latin carne means meat, and vale means goodbye: “Goodbye to meat!” And that’s how we got “carnival.”
The fascination with Ash Wednesday
Something remarkable always happens on Ash Wednesday. It isn’t a Sunday or a holy day of obligation. It’s a weekday and a work day. But still the faithful come flocking! The churches are packed! For some incomprehensible reason, Ash Wednesday curiously fascinates us.
It is quite understandable that the faithful should come flocking on Palm Sunday to receive a blessed palm, or on Candlemas Day to receive a blessed candle, or on Easter Morning to receive blessed water. (It’s the old yen in us humans that likes receiving something for nothing.) But to come flocking on Ash Wednesday in order to receive ashes! To receive nothing! To have our clean faces smudged and to be ominously reminded that we are dust and unto dust we shall return -- that, indeed, is a bit incomprehensible.
For a moment at least, the stark ritual of Ash Wednesday puts us squarely in touch with a profound but nagging reality of our being: our mortality. No matter how much we try to deny it or distract ourselves from it or refuse to think or talk about it, that nagging reality is always there down deep within us. For a moment, the ashes of Lent bring it to the fore—to the forehead, and they remind us of what we like to forget: that we, indeed, are dust, and unto dust we shall return.
With foreheads smudged, Ash Wednesday sends us forth on a forty-day journey towards Easter. But that long journey is sometimes undertaken with a knapsack full of dubious Lenten ideas about God, about sin and about penance.
The God of Lenten observance
On Ash Wednesday we ask who is the God of our Lenten observance? Is He a God who has gone into a deep pout or revengeful anger because of our sins? Is He a God who needs to be appeased and bought off with a glum and onerous observance of forty days? In the old days that frame of mind would always beset me every Ash Wednesday, and I would grit my teeth and set myself to the task of Lent: to buy God off (angered by my sins) with forty onerous days of gloom.
A god who pouts and needs to be appeased like us human beings might well characterize the gods of ancient Greece and Rome but not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex 3:6). It does not characterize the God of the prophet Joel who reminds us every Ash Wednesday that God is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment” (Joel 2:13).
The object of Lenten observance: sin
In place of the old traditional formula for the distribution of ashes (“Remember man that thou are dust….”) the minister of ashes may say instead, “Repent! Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel!”
On Ash Wednesday we ask what is sin (at which our Lenten observance is aimed)? We have all been exposed to the infantile anthropomorphism which characterized sin as “a slap on God’s face.” But God has no face to slap! Less offensive but perhaps not very luminous is the catechism’s age-old answer that sin is “an offence against God.” I have always wondered how in the world can puny man offend an almighty and magnanimous God.
A robust cattle-farmer, who would come into town periodically for a session of spiritual direction, settled my wonderment one day. Strange to say, this robust cattle-farmer was a mystic! He would read St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross (Spanish mystics of the sixteenth century) and Thomas Merton (a famous monk of the twentieth century). Like Merton, he had great affection for Buddhism. He was really a married monk who spent hours on his farm in prayer and meditation.
In one of our sessions, this man, steeped in mystic spirituality (which was a bit beyond me), to my surprise said out of the blue, “I don’t believe in sin!” He glanced to see my reaction. Then he hastened to add, “Oh, I do believe in evil, but I do not believe in sin as an offence against God.” I registered no dismay at his words. I thought he was saying he did not believe that sin could offend an almighty God who is untouchable. (I didn’t believe that either!) I thought he was saying he believed that if sin offends or hurts anyone, it offends or hurts either ourselves or our neighbors, and if it doesn’t hurt ourselves or our neighbors, then whatever it is, it’s simply not sin. (I quietly believe that too!)
The penance of Lenten observance
On Ash Wednesday we ask what is the penance we set before ourselves on our forty-day journey to Easter Sunday? In the old days we used to ask ourselves, “What are we going to give up for Lent?” With good will but not with great perspicacity we would impose on ourselves little penances that gave us candy or movies or other things which we could conveniently give up for forty days and to which we could quickly return on Easter morning.
Since Vatican II there are new Prefaces for the formerly glum season of Lent. One of them spells out the penance of Lent not in terms of what we are to give up but what we are to take on for Lent. It reads,
Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give You thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord. Each year You give us this joyful [not glum] season when we prepare to celebrate the Paschal Mystery with mind and heart renewed.
You give us a spirit of loving reverence for You, our Father,
and of willing service to our neighbor [i.e., what we are to take on for Lent]. As we recall the great events that gave us new life in Christ, You bring the image of your Son to perfection within us.
Now with angels and archangels, and the whole company of heaven, we sing the unending hymn of Your praise. Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
A knock at the door and a summons
On the Saturday between Christmas and New Year’s, Sister Louise Lears, CS, a pastoral minister at St. Cronan’s parish in St. Louis, was served at home with a summons and admonition signed by Archbishop Burke (Arch Shepherd of the Church of St. Louis), to appear at the Catholic Center of the Archdiocese on January 15 at 10 AM, to “take cognizance of the accusation and proofs concerning your apparent commission of the delicts of 1) the rejection of a truth de Fide tenenda (canon 750), and 2) grave scandal (canon 1399).”
Sister Louise knows what prompted the summons: her support of the ordination of women. The two women who were ordained to the Roman Catholic Priesthood in October, 2007, were from St. Cronan’s parish. Rabbi Susan Talve, who offered her synagogue for the ordination of the women, was invited to be the guest preacher at an Advent Vesper at St. Cronan’s. Archbishop Burke requested that the invitation to Rabbi Talve be cancelled. Instead, the Vesper service took place on the public sidewalk outside the church. Sr. Louise presided at the service. This, no doubt, is what incited Burke’s summons, although the summons itself is silent about its motivation. The President of Sr. Louise’s community, Sr. Barbara Hagedorn, has spoken with the Parish Council at St. Cronan’s, and they are standing firm behind Sr. Louise.
The subject of Lenten observance
The alternate formula for the distribution of ashes is, “Repent! Turn away from sin and believe the Gospel!” On Ash Wednesday, we ask who are called to repent and believe the Gospel? Answer: All God’s people are called. In the first reading, the prophet Joel summons everyone: the elders, the children, the infants at breast, the newly weds. He summons also the priests serving the Lord between the altar and the temple. All in the pews and all in the pulpits are called on Ash Wednesday to repent and believe the Gospel.
Archbishop Burke, Sr. Louise, the Parish Council of St. Cronan’s are all called on Ash Wednesday to repent. (The word in Greek is metanoiein, i.e., to change one’s mind and heart.) They are all called to change their minds and hearts. On Ash Wednesday, we ask who are called to believe the gospel? (The word means “good news.”) All are called to believe good news. At the end of the day, all are challenged to face the issue whether the prohibition of the ordination of women is God’s news or just man’s news? All are challenged to face the issue whether the ordination of women is bad news or good news -- Gospel.
Conclusion
The New Lent
Since Vatican II, there is a new Lent in preparation for Easter. The new Lent is not a glum journey of forty days. It is a “joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the Paschal Mystery with our minds and hearts renewed. “ The new Lent does not rehabilitate God, the pouter, who needs to be appeased and bought off. It rehabilitates us “by bringing the image of Your Son to perfection within us.” The new Lent does not give up things. Rather it takes on ”the willing service of others.” The new Lent, God willing, calls not only the sheep to repentance but the shepherds as well.
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish.
[2] By the “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
[3] Sundays are not included in the count because they are never penitential days.
Joel 2: 12-17 Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-18
To the church in the diaspora[1]
and to the church of the unchurched[2]
First reading from the prophet Joel
Even now, says the Lord, repent sincerely, and return to me with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments. Return to the Lord, your God. For gracious and merciful is He, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment….
Blow the trumpet on Mount Zion! Proclaim a fast and call an assembly! Gather the people and prepare them for a sacred meeting! Assemble the elders, children and infants! Even the newly weds must leave their homes and come. The priests, serving the Lord between the altar and the entrance of the Temple must weep and pray, “Have pity on your people, Lord. Do not let other nations despise us and mock us saying, `Where is your God?`”
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew.
Glory to you, Lord.
Jesus said to his disciples: Take care not to perform righteous deedsin order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win the praise of others. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your almsgiving may be secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.----------------
Introduction
Changing the liturgical clock
With Ash Wednesday (February 6, 2008) we exit Ordinary Time and enter into the Extraordinary Time of Lent in preparation for Easter (March 23, 2008).
How we got Lent and Ash Wednesday
The gospels recount how Jesus was led into the desert by the Holy Spirit, where he fasted and prayed for forty days and nights. That forty day ordeal which ends with the Devil tempting Jesus three times is always recounted on the first Sunday of Lent in all three liturgical Cycles of A, B and C (Mt. 4:1-11; Mk. 1:12-13; Lk. 4:1-13). In honor of that forty-day fast and prayer of Jesus, the church in the Council of Laodicaea (360 A.D.) prescribed a forty day penitential season in preparation for the feast of Easter. That’s how we got the season of Lent.
Counting back forty penitential days from Easter (Sundays not included) [3] gives us a Wednesday as the opening day of Lent. In the course of time the church created a little ceremony to initiate the Lenten season. She took the old palms from the past Palm Sunday, burned them down to ashes and smudged the foreheads of the faithful with the ashes, admonishing them to remember that they are dust and unto dust they shalt return. That’s how we got Ash Wednesday.
Other Lenten trivia
It’s an interesting bit of Lenten trivia to note that the only word Latin has for Lent is "Quadragesima," and that simply means forty. The only word Italian has for Lent is "Quaresima," and that simply means forty. The only word Spanish has for Lent is “Cuaresma,” and that simply means forty. In those languages Lent is simply “the season of the forty” -- the forty days Jesus spent praying and fasting in the desert.
Here is more Lenten trivia: The Tuesday before Ash Wednesday is called Mardi Gras. In French Mardi means Tuesday and gras means gross or fat. In the old days, on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday people stuffed themselves with food and especially with meat before the onerous forty-day period of fasting and abstaining. That’s how we got Mardi gras (Fat Tuesday). And when the sun began to set on Fat Tuesday the faithful cried out, “Carne vale!” In Latin carne means meat, and vale means goodbye: “Goodbye to meat!” And that’s how we got “carnival.”
The fascination with Ash Wednesday
Something remarkable always happens on Ash Wednesday. It isn’t a Sunday or a holy day of obligation. It’s a weekday and a work day. But still the faithful come flocking! The churches are packed! For some incomprehensible reason, Ash Wednesday curiously fascinates us.
It is quite understandable that the faithful should come flocking on Palm Sunday to receive a blessed palm, or on Candlemas Day to receive a blessed candle, or on Easter Morning to receive blessed water. (It’s the old yen in us humans that likes receiving something for nothing.) But to come flocking on Ash Wednesday in order to receive ashes! To receive nothing! To have our clean faces smudged and to be ominously reminded that we are dust and unto dust we shall return -- that, indeed, is a bit incomprehensible.
For a moment at least, the stark ritual of Ash Wednesday puts us squarely in touch with a profound but nagging reality of our being: our mortality. No matter how much we try to deny it or distract ourselves from it or refuse to think or talk about it, that nagging reality is always there down deep within us. For a moment, the ashes of Lent bring it to the fore—to the forehead, and they remind us of what we like to forget: that we, indeed, are dust, and unto dust we shall return.
With foreheads smudged, Ash Wednesday sends us forth on a forty-day journey towards Easter. But that long journey is sometimes undertaken with a knapsack full of dubious Lenten ideas about God, about sin and about penance.
The God of Lenten observance
On Ash Wednesday we ask who is the God of our Lenten observance? Is He a God who has gone into a deep pout or revengeful anger because of our sins? Is He a God who needs to be appeased and bought off with a glum and onerous observance of forty days? In the old days that frame of mind would always beset me every Ash Wednesday, and I would grit my teeth and set myself to the task of Lent: to buy God off (angered by my sins) with forty onerous days of gloom.
A god who pouts and needs to be appeased like us human beings might well characterize the gods of ancient Greece and Rome but not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex 3:6). It does not characterize the God of the prophet Joel who reminds us every Ash Wednesday that God is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment” (Joel 2:13).
The object of Lenten observance: sin
In place of the old traditional formula for the distribution of ashes (“Remember man that thou are dust….”) the minister of ashes may say instead, “Repent! Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel!”
On Ash Wednesday we ask what is sin (at which our Lenten observance is aimed)? We have all been exposed to the infantile anthropomorphism which characterized sin as “a slap on God’s face.” But God has no face to slap! Less offensive but perhaps not very luminous is the catechism’s age-old answer that sin is “an offence against God.” I have always wondered how in the world can puny man offend an almighty and magnanimous God.
A robust cattle-farmer, who would come into town periodically for a session of spiritual direction, settled my wonderment one day. Strange to say, this robust cattle-farmer was a mystic! He would read St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross (Spanish mystics of the sixteenth century) and Thomas Merton (a famous monk of the twentieth century). Like Merton, he had great affection for Buddhism. He was really a married monk who spent hours on his farm in prayer and meditation.
In one of our sessions, this man, steeped in mystic spirituality (which was a bit beyond me), to my surprise said out of the blue, “I don’t believe in sin!” He glanced to see my reaction. Then he hastened to add, “Oh, I do believe in evil, but I do not believe in sin as an offence against God.” I registered no dismay at his words. I thought he was saying he did not believe that sin could offend an almighty God who is untouchable. (I didn’t believe that either!) I thought he was saying he believed that if sin offends or hurts anyone, it offends or hurts either ourselves or our neighbors, and if it doesn’t hurt ourselves or our neighbors, then whatever it is, it’s simply not sin. (I quietly believe that too!)
The penance of Lenten observance
On Ash Wednesday we ask what is the penance we set before ourselves on our forty-day journey to Easter Sunday? In the old days we used to ask ourselves, “What are we going to give up for Lent?” With good will but not with great perspicacity we would impose on ourselves little penances that gave us candy or movies or other things which we could conveniently give up for forty days and to which we could quickly return on Easter morning.
Since Vatican II there are new Prefaces for the formerly glum season of Lent. One of them spells out the penance of Lent not in terms of what we are to give up but what we are to take on for Lent. It reads,
Father, all-powerful and ever-living God, we do well always and everywhere to give You thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord. Each year You give us this joyful [not glum] season when we prepare to celebrate the Paschal Mystery with mind and heart renewed.
You give us a spirit of loving reverence for You, our Father,
and of willing service to our neighbor [i.e., what we are to take on for Lent]. As we recall the great events that gave us new life in Christ, You bring the image of your Son to perfection within us.
Now with angels and archangels, and the whole company of heaven, we sing the unending hymn of Your praise. Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
A knock at the door and a summons
On the Saturday between Christmas and New Year’s, Sister Louise Lears, CS, a pastoral minister at St. Cronan’s parish in St. Louis, was served at home with a summons and admonition signed by Archbishop Burke (Arch Shepherd of the Church of St. Louis), to appear at the Catholic Center of the Archdiocese on January 15 at 10 AM, to “take cognizance of the accusation and proofs concerning your apparent commission of the delicts of 1) the rejection of a truth de Fide tenenda (canon 750), and 2) grave scandal (canon 1399).”
Sister Louise knows what prompted the summons: her support of the ordination of women. The two women who were ordained to the Roman Catholic Priesthood in October, 2007, were from St. Cronan’s parish. Rabbi Susan Talve, who offered her synagogue for the ordination of the women, was invited to be the guest preacher at an Advent Vesper at St. Cronan’s. Archbishop Burke requested that the invitation to Rabbi Talve be cancelled. Instead, the Vesper service took place on the public sidewalk outside the church. Sr. Louise presided at the service. This, no doubt, is what incited Burke’s summons, although the summons itself is silent about its motivation. The President of Sr. Louise’s community, Sr. Barbara Hagedorn, has spoken with the Parish Council at St. Cronan’s, and they are standing firm behind Sr. Louise.
The subject of Lenten observance
The alternate formula for the distribution of ashes is, “Repent! Turn away from sin and believe the Gospel!” On Ash Wednesday, we ask who are called to repent and believe the Gospel? Answer: All God’s people are called. In the first reading, the prophet Joel summons everyone: the elders, the children, the infants at breast, the newly weds. He summons also the priests serving the Lord between the altar and the temple. All in the pews and all in the pulpits are called on Ash Wednesday to repent and believe the Gospel.
Archbishop Burke, Sr. Louise, the Parish Council of St. Cronan’s are all called on Ash Wednesday to repent. (The word in Greek is metanoiein, i.e., to change one’s mind and heart.) They are all called to change their minds and hearts. On Ash Wednesday, we ask who are called to believe the gospel? (The word means “good news.”) All are called to believe good news. At the end of the day, all are challenged to face the issue whether the prohibition of the ordination of women is God’s news or just man’s news? All are challenged to face the issue whether the ordination of women is bad news or good news -- Gospel.
Conclusion
The New Lent
Since Vatican II, there is a new Lent in preparation for Easter. The new Lent is not a glum journey of forty days. It is a “joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the Paschal Mystery with our minds and hearts renewed. “ The new Lent does not rehabilitate God, the pouter, who needs to be appeased and bought off. It rehabilitates us “by bringing the image of Your Son to perfection within us.” The new Lent does not give up things. Rather it takes on ”the willing service of others.” The new Lent, God willing, calls not only the sheep to repentance but the shepherds as well.
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish.
[2] By the “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
[3] Sundays are not included in the count because they are never penitential days.
