Homilies

February 6, 2008
Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:12-18; 2nd Corinthians 5:20-6:2; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18
Fr. Justin Sheehan

Today the Church "proclaims a fast, calls an assembly, gathers the people, and notifies the congregation", God's people. Not in a spirit of gloom, but in a spirit of pilgrimage. This is not a day of long faces, but an acceptable time, a day of salvation, the first of a 40-days' journey toward the triumphant Passover. Ash Wednesday is actually the first day of the Easter cycle, and the discipline of Lent, which we begin today, forms the first part of the Church's annual celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ our Savior. Preparing to celebrate is already, in some measure, to celebrate, and something of the joy of Easter already begins to fill the Church today, making even Ash Wednesday an acceptable time, and a day of salvation.

It is only human to find these 40 days laborious, as hard as the experience of the Jewish people during their 40 desolate years in the desert of Sinai, when they were so tempted to reject the leadership not only of Moses but even of God, and to turn back to Egypt. Lent can be as austere as the 40 days and nights that Moses spent alone on Mt Sinai in preparation for his saving mission. It can be as purifying and as tiring as the 40 days and nights that Jesus spent in the desert.

And yet these earlier Lents were not days of gloom and long faces. In each of them, there was some outward sign that they were days of salvation. Between the exodus from Egypt and the entry into Canaan, there was manna, quail, water from a rock to appease hunger and thirst and relieve the people's fatigue. Moses was not just hungry and thirsty but surrounded and immersed in the glorious cloud of the Divine Presence. And Jesus himself was waited upon by angels after his ordeal in the desert.

All Lent lies in the shadows cast by these great scriptural images - images of austerity and trial ending in mercy and salvation. With these examples in mind the Church asks an austere fast but with a cheerful heart, the practice of self-denial, and works of charity and penance. We too have outward signs to help us on our journey to Easter: we hear the Word of God, we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, and we recognize his Divine Presence in the Christian community. All of these can help us look forward to holy Easter with joy and spiritual longing.

But this first day of our pilgrimage has its own outward sign to get us started: the mark of ashes by which we show that we are dust. Ashes are an Easter sacrament, because they are our link not only with the first Adam but with the human Christ, the second Adam. We will hear, as the first Adam did: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return". Adam broke the fast by eating the forbidden fruit. Christ began his personal journey to Easter by keeping a 40-day fast. Adam sinned and was doomed to die; Christ overcame temptation and conquered death in his human body. Let us then receive these ashes as the mark of a Christian, so that when we return to dust, we/nay hear Christ say, "Awake, o sleeper, rise from the dead, and I will give you light".