How healing will your Lent be this year?

Good News Reflection
Ash Wednesday
February 17, 2010

Today's Readings:
Joel 2:12-18
Ps 51:3-6, 12-14, 17
2 Cor 5:20 — 6:2
Matt 6:1-6, 16-18
http://www.usccb.org/nab/021710.shtml
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/10_02_17.mp3

How healing will your Lent be this year?

What victory do you need? What needs to be resurrected in your life?

For Easter to be more than just a day of colored eggs, fattening chocolates and big dinners, Lent needs to be more than just 40 days of obligatory sacrifices like meatless pizza on Fridays.

To experience the joy and power of resurrection, we have to experience the power of mourning and repentance. We have to experience the powerlessness of death: the death of our selfishness, the death of our worldliness, the death of behaviors that are not Christ-like.

In today's first reading, God beckons: "Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning." Fasting is worthwhile only if it improves our self-discipline so that we can resist sin and grow in holiness. We're hypocrites, like Jesus describes in today's Gospel reading, if fasting produces no inner changes.

What are you going to do for Lent that will promote greater holiness? Here's a suggestion: Identify one fault — just one for starters — and choose an activity or an abstinence for the duration of Lent that will help you overcome this behavior.

Tell God about this fault. He is beckoning: "Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning."

The readings from Joel and the responsorial Psalm remind us that God is merciful toward those who recognize their sinfulness and regret it so much that they're truly motivated to change. Dealing with our need to change can feel overwhelming and shameful, but if we keep our focus on God's mercy, we feel helped, healed, and finally resurrected.

By identifying and working on just one sinful tendency (choosing one selfish behavior or one fear or one flaw or one unloving habit as our Lenten project), we can give it to Jesus, nail it to his cross, and hear him offer it up to God as he cries out, "Father forgive them ....!" It will die with Jesus, and we'll be resurrected to a new life, a new level of holiness with Jesus.

On Ash Wednesday, as you receive and wear your ashes, do it fully awake and aware of your need for forgiveness and your goal of overcoming a significant sin by Easter.

Why do we keep the black smudges on our foreheads all day? Not to win the admiration of others. It's a sign that we know we need to change! Otherwise, we should do as Jesus said: "When you fast, see to it that you ... wash your face" so that no one but God will know what you are doing.

© 2010 by Terry A. Modica
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