Ash Wednesday 2026
Joel 2:12-18
2 Cor 5:20 – 6:2
Mt 6:1-6.16-18
At first, it seems that Lent is about going down. We receive ashes. We are touched by the dust from which we come and to which our body is going. We descend from our little throne, and we go down into humiliation, sorrow of the soul and restraint of the body. We step down from our pretences, our great goals, our illusions. We consent to the truth: we are little, very little persons; we are nearly nothing; our greatest achievements – if such a parlance is not wholly preposterous – will soon be forgotten; the trees we plant will fall down, the walls we build will be taken down; what will remain of us on earth is a handful of dust; we shall die and nothing essential will be missed when we disappear.
God, too, is going down. He looks down on our misery, but this is not enough. He Himself comes down from heaven. He dwells among us. He takes on our flesh, and with this flesh He, too, goes down towards death. Lent is as much about accompanying Him on His way to calvary and the tomb as about entering a way of humility ourselves. In a sense, this is one and the same mystery. When I descend, God’s con-descends: He goes down with me, He goes down to me who am down; He takes my dust on His shoulders, and He enters the kingdom of death first as the only One who can be victorious over death.
Our Lenten movement downwards, our humiliation, are framed by God’s descent to the sinner which is what we call God’s Mercy. I only need to bend down to encounter the God who bends down to me with loving and caring mercy. I think I am descending in my sinfulness, my nothingness, my dust, but this is precisely where I am found by my Saviour who puts me on His own shoulders with infinite kindness. It is only by going down that the stray sheep meets its Good Shepherd and thus makes possible the full joy of salvation: “ ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
This is the moment when Lent changes direction and becomes an ascent, a movement upwards. Up we go, with Jesus leading us and Jesus bearing us on His sacred shoulders. We follow Him on His way up to Jerusalem. We let ourselves be drawn into His ascent to “His Father and our Father”. We pray, we fast, we give alms in secret, seen by the Father only. We pray to Him, we fast for Him, we give to the poor because of Him. We convert and believe in the Gospel in view of Him. Thus, we enter the sonship He has prepared for us. We become a little more His children.
Lent is a way to our Father in heaven. It is a time when we rise from our sins and misery and turn to our Father with renewed hope in His mercy. We offer our dust to the power of His love which can raise us up from the dead. This calls for a deepening of our trust and a broadening of our love. We renew our commitment to serving and loving humbly our brethren – not some ideal brothers and sisters in some idealised world, but the real persons around us in this real world. We strive to serve them and to love them not as we would like them to be, but just as they are – just as God loves them now and mercifully places them with us on the broad and welcoming shoulders of His Son.
Up with us, at this beginning of Lent, dear Brethren. Up to our Father. Let us take the way upwards which is the way downwards of Jesus making Himself humble “unto death, and death on a cross”. Lent, today’s Collect tells us, is a campaign, some sort of military exercise. We take the glorious arms of obedience and humility, silence and lectio divina, fasting and prayer. Thus equipped, we exercise love and charity, we practice the good zeal of love with infinite patience, with forgetfulness of self, with the humble desire that God may be a little more honoured, served and loved in my life; that my neighbour may be consoled by my humble mercy as we walk together, fraternally, towards our Father.