Ash Wednesday begins the great season of Lent. It is a time to take stock of our lives and relationships with God, self, and community: a time to go to the heart in anticipation of the grace of the Resurrection at Holy Easter.
This day is marked with ashes on the forehead as a sign of our repentance and desire for conversion. Today we fast in solitary with all who hunger.
Our readings at Mass today instruct us: “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites” (Matthew 16:16). Lenten practices are meant to be liberating, not tyrannical.
Father Simeon, OCSO, at the homily today suggested that we keep three words as a sort of guide for this Lenten season:
· Now – meaning this Lent – these forty days. Pay attention – be here in this time and space. Keep distractions to a minimum and focus on the heart in order to be ready to let God enter.
· Hidden – as Cistercians we live a “hidden” life in a monastery, away from many societal interactions and pressures. This is a time to be open to that obscurity in humility, poverty of being, and emptiness so that we may encounter God, ourselves, and one another.
· Freedom – our Lenten practices help to free us from fear and compulsion so that we might be fully alive in God’s presence and mercy. Freedom calls us to love without condition.
