Ash Wednesday: repentance, not empty show

For his Lenten message this year, which was released last October on the Feast of St Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis took a verse from the eighth chapter of St. Paul's Letter to the Romans as his focal point: "For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God" (Rom 8:19). Indeed, we were born again as God's children through the waters of baptism. It was through baptism that we were newly created, restored to that state of original grace, the state of communion in which creation began and the state that will mark the completion of God's creation.

Lent is the time each year when we prepare to renew our baptismal promises at the great Easter Vigil. I think it is a good idea to remind ourselves at the outset of Lent what some of those promises are:

Do you renounce Satan?

And all his works?

And all his empty show?

To these three promises are added the three-fold profession of faith, which I might take up in another post as Easter draws closer.

According the Roman Missal there are two forms of the renunciation of sin. I used the first form because I think the final question cuts to the heart of the matter, gets to the essence of what Lent, what Ash Wednesday, is all about - Do you renounce all Satan's empty show?

I hate to be the one to point this out, but it seems to me that Ash Wednesday is very often an exercise in empty show. It always surprises people to learn that Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation. For serious Catholics, this means the church does not require you to go to Mass today. You are required to fast if you are between the ages of 14 and 59, however. Fasting should not be an exercise in how much food you can eat and still be considered fasting in any meaningful sense of the word. In short, you are not ecclesially obligated to receive a black smudge of your forehead and conspicuously walk around sporting it all day.

For anyone who does go to Mass and who receives ashes, the incongruency between Jesus's exhortation in the Gospel reading not to be conspicuous in your piety, in your practice of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving, and then receiving a big, black mark on your forehead should not be lost you. Hence, it is important to consider whether it is a genuine commitment to repent and believe in the Gospel that draws you forth to receive ashes.

Understood properly and worn in the correct spirit, what the ashy smudge on your forehead identifies you as is a sinner. It identifies you as a penitent, a person in need of God's mercy. In what does this penance consist? It consists of ceasing to indulge yourself while others lack what they need. It means going without your excess to provide for those who regularly and involuntarily lack what they need.

I'll be honest, I would prefer having dry ashes sprinkled on my head, which is the custom in many places, to the smudge and all the concomitant cultural distortion that comes with it.

In his lovely book, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, the late John O'Donohue wrote: "In the human face, the anonymity of the universe becomes intimate." For those who endeavor to engage in it, this season is one of repentance that lead to conversion, that brings about a change of heart. The change we seek is to become more fully human, to see our faces and the faces of others, especially the destitute, more clearly in light of the revelation of God in Christ Jesus.

In Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in in Modern World, the Second Vatican Council noted:

He Who is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15) is Himself the perfect man. To the sons of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled, by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too (sec. 22)

So this birth that creation eagerly awaits, like natural birth, requires labor. No one is either conceived or born all by herself. Today Christ calls each of us and all of us together to repent, to change, to turn and follow him with our whole heart, even after Lent ends.

May you be blessed with a holy Lent, one that is not an empty show that begins with the black smudge and then goes nowhere. The smudge received on Ash Wednesday is washed clean at Easter by the water from the baptismal font. It is through the passage in between - what Joel referred to as the space between the porch of the Temple and its sanctuary - that the children of God begin to be revealed.