The time has now come in the Church year for the solemn
observance of the great central act of history, the redemption of
the human race by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the
Roman Rite, the beginning of the forty days of penance is marked
with the austere symbol of ashes which is used in today's liturgy.
The use of ashes is a survival from an ancient rite according to
which converted sinners submitted themselves
to canonical penance. The Alleluia and the Gloria are suppressed
until Easter.
Abstinence from eating meat is to be observed on all Fridays
during Lent. This applies to all persons 14 and older. The law of
fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday applies to all
Catholics from age 18 through age 59.
During a normal Ash Wednesday mass you will hear the words
—‘dust you are, and to dust you shall return’ or even ‘ashes to
ashes, dust to dust’. These words are also part of the funeral
ritual. Why this somber reminder about our mortality? Well for
the very good reason that we will one day go to meet our Maker,
ready or not, and it would be better to be ready, than not! The
reminder of our mortality is meant to help us renounce our
immorality, to repent of our sins, and as the old Southern sign
bluntly said—‘Get right with God, or get left by God’.
Unfortunately, in our current culture we would like short-cut
salvation--- forgiveness without repentance, salvation without a
change of life, grace without gratitude or a change in attitude. In
a God-forsaken life, there may even be an attempt to atone for
one’s own sins. We like to say “let me make it up to you”, but
alas that is seldom possible, even with ordinary mistakes, and
totally impossible if we are talking about sin. One of the most
powerful movies I have seen in years is the Oscar nominated film
-‘Atonement’. It is a truly post-modern film, all about a young girl
with a vivid imagination who is rather jealous of her elder sister
and her relationship with her boyfriend who works on the English
estate where the girls live, but who is ‘beneath the station of the
girl’s family’.
It is a typical class clash English drama in some ways, but there is
much more too it. For the younger sister Briony would like to
have this young man for herself, but when she is spurned,
and something goes terribly wrong on the estate (a teenage girl is
raped) Briony imagines that she saw the young lad doing it, she
accuses him, and he is carted off to jail, ruining her elder sister’s
relationship and hopes. The rest of the movie is consumed with
the tale of atonement, or shall we say attempted do it yourself
atonement. Briony
becomes a nurse during WWI, thinking she can work her sin off
by good deeds. She attempts reconciliation with her sister, but this
does not work. She attempts to wash her hands of the affair, but
this does not work. She writes a clever novel in which there is a
happier ending to the story than there was in real life, ‘to make
amends’ ‘to make it better’ as she says, but alas, the sin is still not
atoned for. Like Lady MacBeth trying to get the blood off her
hands from a murder and crying out in the night ‘out out darn
spot’, there is, and can be no self-atonement!
Let me be perfectly clear---neither good intentions, nor good
efforts, nor good deeds can atone for sin—only repenting, turning
to God who has atoned for sin in the death of his Son
Jesus, and receiving forgiveness from Him can break the endless
cycle of futile and fatal attempts at self-justification and self-
atonement.
It is more than fitting that at the beginning of Lent we would
repent, in reminder that at the end of Lent our means of
forgiveness shows up in the person of Jesus, and through his
atoning death on the cross. Only God in Christ can not merely
forgive sins, but make the sinner whole. Only he has the grace
which can change a sinner into a saint. So as we have the ashes
imposed we remember our mortality and our immorality and
realize that ‘tempus fugit’ and there is need that we get right with
God before we go ‘gentle into that good night’ as Dylan Thomas
put it.
In the ancient church, Lent was a time for new
converts to be instructed for baptism and for
believers caught in sin to focus on repentance. In
time, all Christians came to see Lent as a season to be reminded of
their need for penitence and to
prepare spiritually for the celebration of Easter.
Part of this preparation involved the Lenten “fast,” giving up
something special during the six weeks of Lent (but not on
Sundays, in some traditions.)
Historically, many Protestants rejected the practice of Lent,
pointing out, truly, that it was nowhere required in Scripture.
Some of these Protestants were also the ones who refused to
celebrate Christmas, by the way. They wanted to avoid some of
the excessive aspects of Catholic
penitence that tended to obscure the gospel of
grace. These Protestants saw Lent, at best, as
something completely optional for believers, and,
at worst, as a superfluous Catholic practice that
true believers should avoid altogether.
N/B Let me note, at this point, that if you think of
Lent as a season to earn God’s favor by your good intentions or
good works, then you’ve got a theological problem. God’s grace
has been fully given to us in Christ. We can’t earn it by doing
extra things or by giving up certain other things in fasting. If you
see Lent as a time to make yourself more worthy for celebrating
Good Friday and Easter, then perhaps you shouldn’t
keep the season until you’ve grown in your understanding of
grace. If, on the contrary, you see Lent as a time to grow more
deeply in God’s grace, then you’re approaching Lent from a
proper perspective.
Some segments of Protestantism did continue to recognize a
season of preparation for Easter, however. Their emphasis was
not so much on penitence and fasting as an intentional devotion to
God.
I can’t claim to have had any mystical
experiences during Lent, but I have found that fasting from
something has helped me focus on God. It has also helped me to
look ahead to Good Friday and Easter, thus appreciating more
deeply the meaning of the cross and the victory of the
resurrection. Before I began honoring Lent, Good Friday and
Easter always seemed to rush by before I could give them the
attention they deserved. Now I find myself much more ready to
meditate upon the depth of Christ’s sacrifice and to celebrate his
victory over sin and death on Easter.
So, as we enter the season of Lent, I am grateful for the saints
who have gone before me, some of whom discovered the
blessings of giving up something in Lent, while others grew in
their faith by adding a Lenten discipline. No matter what you do
during this Lenten season, I pray that God will draw us closer to
him, and prepare us for a fresh experience of Good Friday and
Easter. May the peace and blessings of our Lord, be with You!

May our Lord JESUS help us in all our need in this lent period through Christ our lord.