Ash Wednesday
February 22, 2012
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
Lent begins each year with a quiet invitation to repent. That’s a word
that comes from the Greek word metanoia, meaning to turn around, to shift
your normal point of view, to have a change of heart as well as mind.
Repentance is one of the great invitations of each and every Lent. And there
are two other invitations that help us to get there: the invitation to be quiet,
and the invitation to pray.
Each invitation is really quite simple. But none will happen
automatically. It takes awareness and a genuine desire, and even some work.
First, to be still. Can we hear God to the whole community, to all of
Israel, to all of the church, to you and me today: be still! Be quiet! Shush!
Be still and know that “I am your God.” Help me to be less afraid to trust
that gentle voice inside of me, in the deepest part of me. That voice that
speaks of peace and embraces another voice that only and always whispers:
“I am your God.” The first invitation of Lent.
And the second is like it. Can you hear God say to all of us again today:
pray! Just pray a bit. You don’t need formularies, you don’t really need
song and dance (pardon me Michael and Fr. Bob). You don’t need fancy
prayers piled up to impress someone (listen again to the gospel today). Just
listen–and be at prayer.
Mary Oliver has a beautiful poem called Praying. In it she says: just
“pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them
elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks and a silence into
which another voice may speak.” The second invitation of Lent.
And the third brings us back to the beginning: repent. Let yourself be
turned around. Look carefully there, inside yourself and believe the good
news. This is the first prayer we prayed together today at the beginning. “Let
us pray in quiet remembrance of our need for redemption.”
We needed redemption. All creation longed for redemption.
Humankind dreamed of redemption. And we all still groan for its
completion. But it has come in Christ Jesus. It has come precisely because of
his journey to Jerusalem that we begin to follow again today in Lent.
In a minute we will sign ourselves with the cross of our redemption. It
is accomplished in that sign. So during these next forty days, as my old
teacher used to remind us on Ash Wednesday “for your penance this Lent, for
God’s sake, try to look redeemed. Be still, pray, turn yourself around a bit,
repent, and know that you are redeemed and that “I am your God.”
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