Wednesday March 2, 2022

ASH WEDNESDAY

 

Here is Lent, Our Favorable Time

 

Lent begins today. It is a “favorable time,” a season of grace. We are called to go up with Christ to Jerusalem, the place where he will suffer and die before he will rise in glory. This means that we are called with him to suffer and die to ourselves, to sin and to give up the evil in and around us, so that we can rise, individually and as a community, to a deeper Christian life, become more available to God and to people, and capable of rendering service with love. The way is conversion and repentance. It is summed up in today’s Gospel as almsgiving, that is, caring for people; as praying, that is, listening to God’s word and giving it a response of love and commitment; and as fasting, that is, giving up our selfishness. We express our willingness to be converted when, after the Gospel, we receive the ashes.

 

First Reading: Joel 2:12-20 

 But there’s also this, it’s not too late—
    God’s personal Message!—
“Come back to me and really mean it!
    Come fasting and weeping, sorry for your sins!”

Change your life, not just your clothes.
    Come back to God, your God.
And here’s why: God is kind and merciful.
    He takes a deep breath, puts up with a lot,
This most patient God, extravagant in love,
    always ready to cancel catastrophe.
Who knows? Maybe he’ll do it now,
    maybe he’ll turn around and show pity.
Maybe, when all’s said and done,
    there’ll be blessings full and robust for your God!

Blow the ram’s horn trumpet in Zion!
    Declare a day of repentance, a holy fast day.
Call a public meeting.
    Get everyone there. Consecrate the congregation.
Make sure the elders come,
    but bring in the children, too, even the nursing babies,
Even men and women on their honeymoon—
    interrupt them and get them there.
Between Sanctuary entrance and altar,
    let the priests, God’s servants, weep tears of repentance.
Let them intercede: “Have mercy, God, on your people!
    Don’t abandon your heritage to contempt.
Don’t let the pagans take over and rule them
    and sneer, ‘And so where is this God of theirs?’”

At that, God went into action to get his land back.
    He took pity on his people.
God answered and spoke to his people,
    “Look, listen—I’m sending a gift:
Grain and wine and olive oil.
    The fast is over—eat your fill!
I won’t expose you any longer
    to contempt among the pagans.
I’ll head off the final enemy coming out of the north
    and dump them in a wasteland.
Half of them will end up in the Dead Sea,
    the other half in the Mediterranean.
There they’ll rot, a stench to high heaven.
    The bigger the enemy, the stronger the stench!”

 

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10 

Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.

How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.

Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us. God reminds us,

I heard your call in the nick of time;
The day you needed me, I was there to help.

Well, now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don’t put it off; don’t frustrate God’s work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we’re doing. Our work as God’s servants gets validated—or not—in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we’re beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we’re telling the truth, and when God’s showing his power; when we’re doing our best setting things right; when we’re praised, and when we’re blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.

 

Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6 

 “Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.

 “When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—‘playactors’ I call them—treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get. When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.

 “And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?

 “Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.

 

Prayer

God our Father,

you know how often we try to go

 our own selfish ways.

Do not allow us to live and die

for ourselves alone

or to close our hearts to others.

Help us to see ourselves and life as gifts from you.

Make us receptive to your word and your life

and make us grow in the mentality

of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

 

Reflection:

Pray and Fast for Peace Today

Today we enter the gracious season of Lent. The Word of God calls us to be intimately united with the Lord. This intimacy with the Lord should manifest an abundance of charity! And so, we hear: pray in private; give alms in secret; and fast with brightly anointed head. The Church encouragers us to live these three spiritual attitudes that mark the Lenten season in exclusive union with God.

While the World is still reeling under the clutches of the Pandemic, human greed for power and superiority is pushing millions of lives into deaths, pains and miseries of war in Ukraine. Despite the international pressures and also a heartfelt appeal made by Pope Francis to “refrain from any action that would cause more suffering to the people, destabilizing coexistence between nations and bringing international law into disrepute,” Russia is waging a war against Ukraine. This is now the largest gathering of the military forces in Europe since World War II.

“My heart aches greatly at the worsening situation in Ukraine,” Pope Francis remarked during his general audience on February 23. The Pope made a personal plea to political leaders, saying, “I would like to appeal to those with political responsibility to examine their consciences seriously before God, who is the God of peace and not of war; who is the Father of all, not just of some, who wants us to be brothers and not enemies.”

The Pope has set this day – Ash Wednesday as a day of prayer and fasting for peace. Calling on all people, “believers and nonbelievers alike,” the pope said, “Jesus taught us that the diabolical senselessness of violence is answered with God’s weapons, with prayer and fasting.” “I encourage believers in a special way to dedicate themselves intensely to prayer and fasting on this day.”

Lent invites us to give alms, and almsgiving must be a result of fasting! An act of mortification should help us to reaching out to those in need. The words of an Oblate Missionary, Father John Wotherspoon, who lived over a decade with the poor people in the street in Hong Kong, could be the message for our Lent this year: “Jesus said, if you help the poor people, see you upstairs; if you are unwilling to help the poor people, please press the down lift!” The plight of the homeless migrants and the poor on the streets in Hong Kong exhibits the sorry picture of our lack of concern for others and poses a challenge before us at the outset of the Season of Lent: The cry of the poor and the homeless cannot be ignored, because they too belong to us.

Together with Pope Francis let us continue to pray: “May Mary Queen of Peace preserve the world from the madness of war.”

 

Video available on Youtube: Pray and Fast for Peace Today