66. Ash Wednesday

Meditations no. 112 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The Church is offering us an opportunity for a new conversion.

Lent begins today, and God’s call to penance reaches our ears. Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil. Who knows whether he will not turn and repent, and leave a blessing behind him, a cereal offering and a drink offering to the Lord your God?

In God’s name, our holy Mother the Church calls us urgently, anxious for the eternal salvation of her children: Direct our hearts to better things, O Lord: heal our sin and ignorance. Lord, do not face us suddenly with death, but give us time to repent. Nobody can consider themselves exempt from this sincere encounter with God’s mercy: Blow the trumpet in Sion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the elders, gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her chamber. Between the vestibule and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say: Spare your people, O Lord?

We need to prepare ourselves in order to take advantage of this spatium verae poenitentiae, this time for true penance to which the Liturgy invites us. Exhortamur ne in vacuum gratiam Dei recipiatis, we entreat you not to offer God’s grace an ineffectual welcome. Yes, God’s grace can fill us this Lent, provided we do not close the doors of our heart. We must be well-disposed, we must really want to change; we cannot play with God’s grace. Every day is a good day to begin again in the interior life, but the beginning of Lent contains a calling - a special grace. Ecce nunc tempus acceptable, ecce nunc dies salutis, here is the time of pardon; the day of salvation has come already. Once again we hear the voice of the good shepherd calling us tenderly: Ego vocavi te nomine tuo, I have called you by your name. He calls each of us by our own name, the familiar name used only by those who love us. Words cannot describe Jesus’ tenderness towards us …

Ecce nunc dies salutis, the day of salvation is here before us. The call of the good shepherd has reached us: I have called you by your name. Since love repays love, we must reply: Ecce ego quia vocasti me, here I am, for you have called me. I have decided not to let this Lent go by like rain on stones, leaving no trace. I will let it soak into me, changing me. I will be converted, I will turn again to the Lord and love him as he wants to be loved.

Conversion has to be based on God’s boundless mercy.

Today, the Church sprinkles the heads of her people with ashes, obtained from last year’s blessed palms and branches; and the faithful receive them with sorrow for their sins. Lord, bless these ashes by which we show that we are dust. Pardon our sins and keep us faithful to the discipline of Lent, for you do not want sinners to die but to live with the risen Christ.

We acknowledge our faults: our negligence, our lack of generosity and zeal in God’s service, our daily weaknesses and omissions, our carelessness in the Norms, and our heedlessness of God due to self-love or self-indulgence. We feel that we are covered in stains as we come before the Holy of Holies; and filled with sorrow, we apply to ourselves the words of Divine Wisdom which the Church now repeats to us: Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return. But we desire to receive the sovereign rays of the Sun of Justice, the grace which Christ gained for us with his Blood, and we pray: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your holy Spirit from me.

With each year that passes, the light of God makes us see more clearly not only our offences and failings but also God’s saving power. Let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of your name … Why should the nations say: where is their God? And since we realize we are children of God, from our sense of divine filiation there comes confidence that we will be forgiven. Men do not scandalize God. He can put up with all our infidelities. Our Father in heaven pardons any offence when his child returns to him, when he repents and asks for pardon. The Lord is such a good father that he anticipates our desire to be pardoned and comes forward to us opening his arms laden with grace.

This confidence in our Father God’s loving embrace enables us to pray simply and openly: “Our desires to remove all that spoils the cleanness of our self-giving are founded on you; our hope of starting a new conversion in our life now, is based on you; our dream of improving a little each day depends on you.” God encourages us like a good Father: At the acceptable time, I have listened to you and helped you on the day of salvation. Since he promises you his glory, his love, and gives it to you at the right time; since he calls you, what are you in turn going to give the Lord? How are you going to respond? And how will I respond to this love of Jesus who has come out to meet us?

We live this time of penance by making specific resolutions to improve.

During Lent, we relive the forty days of fasting in the desert with which Christ prepared the fruitfulness of his public life. The Church makes this a time for penance, and lays down that, starting at an appropriate age, the faithful should practise fasting and abstinence on certain days. It is a very definite way of purifying our interior dispositions, which are often made murky by a disorderly attachment to created things.

In God’s eyes, a spirit of penance implies, above all, breaking the chains of sin and undergoing a sincere inner conversion, so that our souls are transformed according to God’s will. Christ does not want anything showy from us. On the contrary, when you fast, today’s Gospel tells us, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. St Augustine states that, under a humble appearance, there can be much bragging; and this is even more dangerous because it deceives under the guise of piety, with the appearance of serving God.

We desire a true conversion: we wish to renew the impulse of our first love for God, which has perhaps been diminished by the obstacles raised by our own wretchedness. It is not an easy programme. But then Christianity is not an easy way of life. It is not enough just to be in the Church letting the years roll by. In our life, in the life of Christians, our first conversion - that unique moment which each of us remembers, when we clearly understood everything the Lord was asking of us - is certainly very significant But the later conversions are even more important, and they are increasingly demanding. To facilitate the work of grace in these conversions, we need to keep our soul young; we have to call upon our Lord, know how to listen to him, and having found out what was wrong, know how to ask his pardon.

So we now invoke God who always listens to us. He wants to intervene, and enter our lives to free us from evil and fill us with good: Eripiam eum et glorificabo eum, I will rescue him and honour him, he says of man. So we must hope for glory. Here again we have the beginning of that interior movement that makes up our spiritual life. Hope of glory increases our faith and fosters our charity. The three theological virtues, godly virtues which make us like our Father God, have been set in motion.

What better way to begin Lent? Let’s renew our faith, hope and love. The spirit of penance and the desire for purification come from these virtues. Lent is not only an opportunity for increasing our external practices of self-denial. If we thought it were only that, we would miss the deep meaning it has in Christian living, for these external practices are - as I have said - the result of faith, hope and charity.

If our resolution to improve is sincere, the grace of God and of his holy Mother Mary will not be lacking.