First Sunday of Lent
A sign on Interstate 75 caught people’s attention this Ash Wednesday: “Drive Through Ashes.” On Ash Wednesday the Mt. Healthy United Methodist Church I Cincinnati offered drive through ashes to somehow accommodate ashes into people’s busy lives. On the one hand this is very creative. On the other hand, Ash Wednesday is really not about the ashes, is it? Ash Wednesday and Lent are really not about finding a way to accommodate God into our busy lives. It is exactly the opposite. It is about bringing God to the center and finding a way to accommodate our lives around God! Christianity is not a drive-through spirituality. It is about pausing, about slowing down, about setting aside time for something very sacred and holy.
In the Catholic Church, no other season of in the church begins in a more dramatic way than Ash Wednesday. Think about it for a moment. Catholics all over the world take the time, come into God’s house (not a drive-through), and have ashes imposed on their foreheads. Ashes…. There are so many things they could rather impose than ashes. But ashes are connected so deeply to the meaning of Lent. Something has to die when it is burnt; the burning of the palms is itself purifying; and then, the residue of the burnt palms take on a new life. It could fertilize the earth, it could act as a cleaning agent or people could impose it on foreheads to symbolize leaving their past to make new beginnings. And so after Ash Wednesday, here we are on the First Sunday of Lent. What the ashes are, we must now become. As today’s reading suggest to us, this is not a drive-through event.
I would like to offer three points to reflect upon. I am basing myself on the second reading from the first letter of Peter.
1.The first thing I want to do is connect the beginning of Lent with the end of Lent. Lent leads us to Holy Week, which celebrates the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Peter puts it in these words: “Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God (1 Pet 3:18). In other words, the reason why Jesus went into the desert to be tempted, the reason he began his ministry, the reason he endured opposition, betrayal, suffering and death was make God accessible like never before. So the first purpose of these fourty days is to unite ourselves with Jesus. Secondly, it is in uniting ourselves with Jesus that we are lead to oneness with God. And this precisely is the sole purpose of Lent – that at the end of Lent we find ourselves in a better place with God than when we were at the beginning of Lent.
2.To make the point clearer, Peter takes us back to Noah and our baptism. Peter says, “God patiently waited in the days of Noah during the building of the ark, in which a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water.” It may seem horrendous to us that God would cause such destruction, but the point of the story quite another. The reason God brought about the flood was for cleansing. Just as the sin destroyed the earth with flood so does sin cause self-destruction to us. The only way out of the destruction that sin causes is God. Through the flood God gave humanity a new beginning. Similarly, every Lent is an opportunity for a new beginning. A parishioner came to me this Friday and said, “I am going to make it to the sacrament of reconciliation every week during Lent. I would like to start anew.” How different do you think this is from the drive-through spirituality that some churches offer. So are there areas in your life where you are seeking a new beginning?
3.Peter offers one other point that can make our Lent even more meaningful. Peter makes the connection between three events in human history: Noah and the flood, Christ death and resurrection and our baptism. Baptism, for Peter, is like the Great Flood. It symbolizes a dying and a rising to new life in Christ who also died and rose again for us. I want you to think about what you do each time you enter a Catholic Church? You most probably take holy water and bless yourself with the Sign of the Cross. Do you realize the depth of that action? When you mark yourself you connect with Noah all the way up the Jesus Christ and your baptism. It is an invitation to cleanse yourself like God cleansed the world in the time of Noah; it is a resolve to die to yourself so that Christ might bring you to new life. This deep meaning of Lent is what we are called to live during these fourty days.
As we begin these days of Lent, may we enter into the depths of what God is calling us to.
- Fr. Satish Joseph