Good News Ministries at 1511 Carter Oaks Drive, Valrico, FL 33594 US - Ash Wednesday

Reflection:
What victory do you need? What needs to be resurrected?

If we want Easter this year to be more than just a holiday of pretty eggs, chocolate bunnies and big dinners, we have to make Lent more than just 40 days of enduring an annoying sacrifice, eating meatless pizza on Fridays, and going to an occasional extra event at church. If we want to experience the power of resurrection, we have to experience the power of mourning and repenting from our sinfulness. In other words, we have to experience the powerlessness of death - the death of our selfishness, the death of our worldliness, the death of our behaviors that are not Christ-like.

Every Ash Wednesday, God beckons: "Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning" (Joel 2:12-18).

Fasting is purposeful and powerful only if we use it as a self-imposed discipline for our flesh. A fast is meaningless if it doesn't help us learn better self-control, which is needed to grow in holiness and increase our intimacy with God. We are hypocrites, as Jesus describes in today's Gospel reading, if there is no spiritual meaning and inner change that comes from fasting.

What are you giving up for Lent or adding into your Lenten days that will promote your spiritual growth? If you haven't figured this out yet, today is the deadline. Here's a suggestion: Identify one fault -- just one spiritual flaw -- and choose an activity or an abstinence that will help you overcome it.

Today, God beckons: "Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning."

In Joel (today's first reading) and in the responsorial Psalm, we are reminded of God's mercy for those who recognize their sinfulness and are so sorrowful about it that they want to change. Throughout Lent, in the readings at Mass and these Daily Reflections, we'll be growing in our desire to change. But we'll feel overwhelmed and shamefully horrid unless we keep our eyes focused on God's mercy. As we journey with Jesus to Calvary and Easter, we'll get tired and give up unless we keep looking forward to the resurrection (new life) that is guaranteed to come.

Choose just one sinful tendency you have -- just one selfish behavior or one fear or one flaw or one unloving habit -- and make this your Lenten project. Give it to Jesus; this is the cross you carry together on the way to Calvary. Nail it to the cross. Listen when Jesus offers it up to God as He cries out, "Father forgive them ....!" It will die with Jesus. And then on Easter, you will experience new life, a new level of holiness.

Today as we receive and wear our ashes, let us do it fully awake and aware of our sinfulness. God beckons: "Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning." Let us receive our ashes for the sake of overcoming the one sin we have identified for this year's Lenten journey.

Jesus is saying that we should never do something Let us make sure that we don't have one second of doing it for the admiration of others by keeping it a secret between us and God. To that end, Jesus is saying, "When you fast, see to it that you ... wash your face" so that no one but God will know what you are doing.

Why do we keep the black smudges on our foreheads all day? Not to win the approval or acceptance or admiration of others. It's a sign that we know we need to change!

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© 2002 by Terry A. Modica

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