Quinquagesima 2010
“Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God.”
Wednesday: Ash Wednesday Choral Mass with Imposition of Ashes at 6pm. A day of Obligation.
Next Sunday February 21st, First Sunday in Lent, Morning Prayer at 9:30am; Choral Mass at 11am.
Reflections: “Remember, oh man, that dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” Last night we had our solemn and beautiful service of Ash Wednesday. Within that solemn rite, we formally and solemnly acknowledge our wretchedness before God. And we do it corporately … with each other, as a parish family going before the overwhelming Righteousness of God to plead for mercy … instead of richly deserved justice. We plead that the Passion of Jesus Christ be placed between us and our thoroughly deserved punishment. We plead that God Almighty see only Jesus and not our miserable fallen selves. We ceremonially abase ourselves. We mark ourselves with ashes … ashes of grieving and regret … drawn in a Cross on our foreheads. The ashes say it all. Ashes to mark us. We look at each other and see those ashes, that declaration of sinfulness. I look at you and see it. You look at me and see it. There’s no getting around it, it’s there ! And it’s telling the truth!
We are all like dust … with absolutely nothing to hold us together except for the loving will of Almighty God. And if we deserve to lose that holding together, and we really do deserve to lose that holding together … what could possibly make the difference? The difference is … and this is the whole point really, those ashes are shaped in a Cross. Even our dust bears the mark, bears the pattern of Our Lord’s Cross of Crucifixion … of His Body broken and His Blood poured out … for us, given for us. Our very natures are shaped by His nature. We bear His identity as a shaping, patterning Cross sealing us from, protecting us from judgment and hell.
And our part is live that Cross of ashes … to go to Him with broken and contrite hearts … to acknowledge to Him the truth of our utter wretchedness and our complete dependence on Him. Lent is a time of getting real about ourselves … so that God can be real to us. As we do that, that pattern, that Cross seeps down into and through us. It shapes us and prepares us. That Cross makes us ready to receive perfect remission and forgiveness … and ready for a life of love with God and each other.
Grant us, Lord, to begin this period of Christian warfare by holy fasting; so that we who are about to fight against the spirits of evil
may be helped and defended by self-denial, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.