Ash Wednesday - Pastoral Letter
From CatholicWikipedia
[edit] To the Whole Church – The Fifteenth Station
by Rev. Mr. David Martins, Church of the Holy Paraclete, Providence, Rhode Island,
- My Lord, Jesus Christ, you have made this journey to die for me with unspeakable love; and I have so many times ungratefully abandoned You. But now I love You with all my heart; and because I love You, I am sincerely sorry for ever having offended You. Pardon me, my God, and permit me to accompany You on this journey. You go to die for love of me; I want, my beloved Redeemer, to die for love of You. My Jesus, I will live and die always united to You.[1]
My brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,
When thinking and praying about the season of Lent, I cannot help but let my mind wander back to my Seminary days. Simply put, I dreaded Lent. I remember how the smokers would try and quit smoking for 40 days, the drinkers laid off the frequenting of the local pub, and the gamblers lessened their visits to the casinos in nearby Connecticut. Everyone talked about what they were “giving up” for Lent. In those days my mindset was one of negativity towards the whole idea. I remember thinking to myself, “I’m 18 years old, I’ve committed to a celibate life, I have no money, and have dedicated my life to the Church; what more can I give up?”
It wasn’t until my grad school years when I was talking with a priest friend who asked, “What are you doing for Lent?” I responded with my short laundry list of various menial things I was giving up. He responded, “oh that’s nice, but what are you doing for Lent.” I realized that year that Lent was not about those trivial “sacrifices” that we make. It’s not about giving things up; it’s about being active, and aggressively working towards improvement, not a temporary one, but a permanent one.
We are reminded quite clearly of this in the Gospel from Saint Matthew that we read on Ash Wednesday. Jesus reminds us to “take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them.”[2] Through the whole Gospel He talks about the various aspects of the Lenten experience; giving alms, prayer, and fasting. On each topic He is clear that we should not make a public spectacle of it, but rather to do so unseen, “and your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”[3]
While these things are all a part of the Catholic Lenten experience, the real meaning of Lent, and the deeper reason for these forty days is that true and earnest conversion in our hearts. It is an action that is seen not by others, but by God alone. In the first reading of Ash Wednesday the Prophet Joel tells us what we should “do” during Lent when he calls us to “rend your hearts, and not your garments.”[4] The traditional public act of expressing penance is the tearing of the penitent’s garments, but here we are reminded that it is our hearts that must be torn instead to bring about that true conversion.
That is the root of these forty days. We must tear our hearts, and put it all in the hands of the Lord. We put His will before our own, and put everything totally in His hands. It is a lesson that through the centuries has never been easy to learn.
Moses and the Israelites wandered through the dessert for forty years in their journey to the Promised Land, and the ongoing lesson they continued to learn was that in order to succeed in their journey and reach their goal they had to put everything in the hands of God. Moses climbs Mount Sinai and receives the Commandments from God, and upon his return from this experience he finds the Israelites worshiping the Golden Calf. They were too impatient to wait for the revelation of the one true God, so they fashion one on their own accord. They complain that they are hungry, and God sends down bread from heaven, called Manna. He tells them to trust Him that He will continue to provide what they need, and they fail to do so. Despite the impatience of the people, and their continual resolve to put their own will first, God still does not abandon them. Eucharistic Prayer IV puts it best; “Even when he disobeyed you and lost your friendship you did not abandon him to the power of death, but helped all men to seek and find you. Again and again you offered a covenant to man, and through the prophets taught him to hope for salvation.”[5]
Its not just the Exodus story; the entire Old Testament is in many ways a testimony to this idea. The characters of these stories are constant reminders that nothing can be accomplished as long as we are promoting our will over the Lord’s. Abraham becomes impatient while waiting for his promised child, so he sleeps with one of his maids. David the great king on numerous occasions fails to be patient for God and His will, and makes mistakes that damage not only his personal life, but also that of the community he serves.
We, as clergy must always bear these examples in mind, as our sins affect not only us, but also our communities we serve. Not being a part of the Roman Church means that in many ways we are on our own. We do not inherit massive Churches with endowments, schools, and thousands of families. Rather, we offer Mass in our homes, or in my parish’s case in a coffee house, or wherever the Lord is needed. It is very easy for us to put our will ahead of the Lord’s when it comes to our life of ministry. We set goals for ourselves, and we establish hopes and goals that we believe are for the good of our ministries, and sometimes we forget that the Holy Spirit is the driver here, and not us. Lent is a wonderful time to remind us of the very important detail, that it is the Lord who we serve, not ourselves.
Catherine of Sienna held the clergy to very high standard, as well she should. She once said, “If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire.” What should we be then? We should be living examples of the Cross. At Mass the Christ Event is made present, and we as clergy are directly linked to that experience, and are called to live it at every moment, in every day. She says in one of her writings, “And he, due to his priestly office, much more than any other lay person. For this reason the same sin is punished more in him than in one who would have stayed in the world. At the moment of death his enemies will accuse him more terribly, as I have told you.”[6] The people we serve, the community at large, and indeed God Himself holds us to a higher standard, and looks to us as the example of life in Christ, which is all together appropriate in light of the ontological change we experience on Ordination day.
Eucharistic Prayer IV[7] goes on to bring us hope. We have a history of God reaching out to us, and us failing to respond. We go on however to be reminded that, “Father, you so loved the world that in the fullness of time you sent your only Son to be our Savior.”[8] That was the fulfillment of the promise of God to the Israelites, and it is the fulfillment of our forty days of Lent. We spend this season rendering our hearts, laying down our wills, and giving it all to God, and He in turn gives us His son. At Christmas we celebrated His birth, but it is His death and resurrection that gives us new life. We suffer while trying to lay down ourselves for Him, and then we watch as He does the same for us.
Saint Alphonsus Liguori penned one of the most personal and moving Stations of the Cross in the Church. The opening prayer reads as follows; “My Lord, Jesus Christ, you have made this journey to die for me with unspeakable love; and I have so many times ungratefully abandoned You. But now I love You with all my heart; and because I love You, I am sincerely sorry for ever having offended You. Pardon me, my God, and permit me to accompany You on this journey. You go to die for love of me; I want, my beloved Redeemer, to die for love of You. My Jesus, I will live and die always united to You.”[9]
The phrase “unspeakable love” is one that we could pray over for all of Lent and beyond. As a society we have bastardized the word “love” so badly, that it’s meaning has become deeply misconstrued. We all to often use the word far too soon, and far too often in relationships. And to say that this love is “unspeakable” is a concept nearly impossible to realize. There is almost nothing in this world that is unspeakable. We talk about everything. We gossip, almost uncontrollably. The news makes public the private lives of so many people. We are always eager to share everything we know, and often private information is held as a sacred possession. If my years behind the bar serving drinks has taught me anything, it is that there is nothing in this world anymore that is “off limits” to talk about. So if this love is in fact so strong that it is “unspeakable” how can it be expressed?
The answer is right there in the prayer itself, “you go to die for love of me.” His love is so deep it can only be expressed by giving His life and suffering on the Cross, and the natural response to that unspeakable love can only be expressed the same way, by us giving our lives, and our own suffering.
The words of that prayer sum up our Lenten experience. Any sacrifices we make, weather it be smoking, drinking, gambling, or whatever it may be. The children give up candy, and certain TV shows, etc. These sacrifices are all external signs of the invisible reality of conversion. They are simply expressions of that deeper meaning of Lent; He goes to die for love of us, therefore we go to die for love of Him. Saint Therese of Lisieux said, “Trials help us detach ourselves from the earth; they make us look higher than this world. Here below nothing can satisfy us. One cannot enjoy a moment's rest save in constant readiness to do the will of God.”[10] The writings of Therese talk about the joy she took in her suffering. She took such joy in it because she could see the amazing grace that it would yield.
Brothers and Sisters, as clergy we are called to live this prayer every day of our lives. It is very easy for us to get caught up in “who we are” and “what we do”, and it is all together too easy to forget about our own faith journey with the Lord by getting shrouded by our vestments.
We are called to live the Eucharist we celebrate; we are called to die to Him, as He died for us. We do so with joy because we know what the “Fifteenth Station” is. We know what comes at the end of our life long Lent. “Father, in your mercy grant also to us, your children, to enter into our heavenly inheritance in the company of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, and your apostles and saints. Then, in your kingdom, freed from the corruption of sin and death, we shall sing your glory with every creature through Christ our Lord, through whom you give us everything that is good.”[11] To share in the glory of Christ in heaven, it is only logical that we must share in His passion on earth.
This Lent may we all work towards that true conversion of heart. May we realize that Lent isn’t about what we give up, it’s about what we do. It is about action, and what we are called to do is rend our hearts, and suffer and die to self, so that one day just as we’ve shared in Christ’s suffering, we will share in His glory.
- Given at Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America
- Ash Wednesday, February seventeen, in two thousand and tenth the year of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ
- Rev. Mr. David Martins Church of the Holy Paraclete
- ↑ St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Stations of the Cross, Preparatory Prayer
- ↑ Matthew 6:1-2
- ↑ Matthew 6:18
- ↑ Joel 2:13
- ↑ Eucharistic Prayer IV, Roman Rite, Paul VI Liturgy
- ↑ St. Catherine of Sienna, The Dialogue 130
- ↑ Roman Rite's Paul VI Liturgy
- ↑ Eucharistic Prayer IV, Roman Rite, Paul VI Liturgy
- ↑ St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Stations of the Cross, Preparatory Prayer
- ↑ Prayers and Meditations of Therese of Lisieux
- ↑ Eucharistic Prayer IV, Roman Rite, Paul VI Liturgy
