Ash Wednesday 2022
Joel 2:12-18
2 Cor 5:20 – 6:2
Mt 6:1-6.16-18
In a troubled country, many centuries before Christ, the prophet Joel voiced a strong call to repentance. ‘Return’, he cried out, ‘return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil.’
It is always possible, it is never too late to return to our God.
It is not too late for me, for you, today, to return to the Lord; to begin again the Lenten journey: a journey of conversion, of returning to the Father, a forty days walk as we follow Jesus, our good Shepherd, who is bringing us back to the Father’s home through His cross and resurrection.
How shall we return? The Prophet explains: ‘with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning’. Today, accepting the invitation of Pope Francis, we are praying and fasting, weeping and mourning most especially for the great intention of peace and for the peoples of the Ukraine and Russia. For them and with them, we ‘rend‘ our own hearts; we confess our own sins; we decide once more to walk the paths of justice and mercy, of forgiveness and love. We open our hearts to the grace of the Gospel as we try again to be just and good, merciful and loving in our everyday lives. If the border between evil and good goes through the middle of our heart, working on our own hearts (or in the Prophet’s words, rending our hearts) is probably our most effective contribution to the peace of the world. It is certainly one we should not skip.
Fasting and praying are not about putting on an external attitude or a ‘show’ in order to persuade others – and, through them, ourselves – that we are right. Lent is, in a sense, very private. We pray and we fast under the eyes of our Father who knows us, who alone sees what we do for Him alone. What others may or may not think of us is not relevant. Our truth is in God’s eyes, not in the world’s. Praying, fasting, rending our heart are to be done in the private space where the Father knows us, in the light of His mercy.
At the same time, Lent is also for our community, and indeed for the whole Church. Joel summons the whole people: elders, children, nursing infants, bride and bridegroom, priests and ministers of the Lord. All are mustered. All can make their own contribution, in one way or another. We pray together, on the same day, listening to the same Word of God and performing the same liturgical actions. We fast together, too, as a community, as the Church of Christ which is ‘always holy and always in need of purification’ (Lumen Gentium 8). Through prayer and fasting, we entrust ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit, humbly asking Him to pray in us and to be the soul of our Lenten penance. May this Lent be His: His work in us, His work in the Church, His work in the world; work of conversion in us; work of sanctification in the Church; work of reconciliation and peace in the world.
It is never too late to return to the Father, in the strength of the Spirit, with all our heart. May Our Lady, Queen of Peace and perfect Spouse of the Spirit, be with us on our Lenten pilgrimage and, through her intercession, obtain for our world the gifts of conversion and peace.
Abbot Xavier Perrin