Ash Wednesday: Lent begins

I have no desire to expound on today's Mass readings, except to urge anyone reading this to quietly consider how you might engage in the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Even if you're not a believer, spend some quiet time, go without in solidarity with those who do so involuntarily, and serve others in helpful and kind ways.

I was struck today by three things in the Church's liturgy. The first two arose from Morning Prayer. One of the Intercessions cuts to the heart of what Lent is all about:

Teach us to be loving not only in great and exceptional moments,
- but above all in the ordinary events of daily life

The second also gets to the heart of the reason for this sanctifying season. It is from the Prayer that concluded this morning's office:

As we begin the discipline of Lent, make this day holy by our self-denial

What struck me about this is something that I "knew." But this prayer helped it penetrate my too often hardened heart.

What I did realize (again)? That I will never become holy simply by performing acts of self-denial. Only God can, by his grace, make me holy, or even make this day holy to me.

There is also the sense that not only is every day holy but that I am holy. Like the golden ring that gets dropped on the ground and covered with dirt, my holiness, buried beneath detritus of all my striving and distractions, needs to be "unearthed." I think the spiritual disciplines help in this regard. There's a line in the chorus of Jennifer Knapp's beautiful song "A Little More" that articulates this in such a heartfelt way: "Unearth this holiness I can't earn."

As to this seemingly audacious idea that I am already, in some sense, at some level, holy (and so are you!), Pater Tom (Merton), in his still amazing and eclectic book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, noted:

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us

As to how practicing spiritual disciplines is an aid, and only an aid- means, not an end, I invoke something James Kushiner wrote more than a decade ago on the old Touchstone blog, "Mere Comments," continues to resonate with me, which is why I probably overuse it:

A discipline won’t bring you closer to God. Only God can bring you closer to Himself. What the discipline is meant to do is to help you get yourself, your ego, out of the way so you are open to His grace

Thirdly, I was struck by the Collect for Mass referring to Lent as "this campaign of Christian service."

Of course, these three things are connected, even if inversely to the order in which I presented them. Laying it way too cleanly: the purpose of Lent to better love God and neighbor - and the way we do this is through a more intentional and perhaps more intensive practice of the fundamental spiritual disciplines - almsgiving, which constitutes "this campaign of Christian service," is the fruit of prayer and fasting.

Blessings and peace. May you be ready to celebrate the Glory of Christ's Resurrection at Easter and renew your baptismal promises from your heart.