Ash Wednesday and Lent. It Works if you Work It

Lent can be a powerful liturgical season, if we participate. However, it only works if you work it, and make it your own.

If we enter into the observance of Lent with our entire person, it can draw us, at its' closure, into a deeper embrace and experience of the power of the Resurrection, beginning right now and stretching into eternity. Our frequent liturgical celebrations present us with a special opportunity and not an imposition.It only works if you work it, and make it your own.

CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - Every Ash Wednesday, as a member of the Clergy, a Catholic Deacon, I administer the ashes to the faithful who come forward to identify themselves as pilgrims on the 40-day journey of repentance and conversion. Ash Wednesday begins a period of protracted prayer, penance, meditation and ascetical practices (acts befitting our true repentance) which is called Lent.

The word Lent is derived from the "lengthening" of the hours of the day each year. It falls in the transition time when we move from the barrenness of winter with its long periods of darkness into the verdant new life and longer days of sunshine we call spring.  Lent is also called "the Forty days". In fact, that is the older term for this period of time in the Christian calendar. This Season continues for forty days until the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday.

Then, we enter into the Easter "Triduum" (Latin for three days), culminating in the Victory Feast of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The tabulation of the number of days in Lent does not include Sunday, the Lord's Day, which is always seen as a little Easter.

Who Needs Lent? We Do

The Church uses the symbols of nature to point us toward and help us obtain a supernatural effect. These symbols, such as the ashes placed upon our heads of the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, also need to be viewed with the eyes of living faith. They are both a symbol of our mortality and an invitation to continual repentance and reform, to ongoing conversion.

The Ordo (Order of Service) offers two forms which are to be said by the Priest or the Deacon as the Ashes, made from the burnt Palms from the prior year's Passion/Palm Sunday, are rubbed into the penitent's forehead as a sign of their voluntary penitence; "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel" or, "Remember you are dust and to dust you will return". They both remind us of our utter dependence upon God.

Every Lent is a reminder of our mortality. "Remember you are dust and to dust you will return" is a time for us to pause and reflect. In an age drunk on self-worship, a reminder of the brevity of our days should draw us to our knees. From there we can look up at the Cross which bridges heaven and earth. There at the altar of the New World, Christ became our Paschal Sacrifice. There we can climb into His wounded side.

After receiving the ashes, we are exhorted to leave the Church as penitents and pilgrims and continue in a Christian way of life every day. We are invited to allow the light of the Holy Spirit to penetrate the dark places in our daily lives.  We are exhorted to make a good confession, pray more, genuinely fast, read and live in God's Word, frequent the Sacraments, and engage in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  

If we enter into Lent with our entire person, it can draw us, at its' closure, into a deeper embrace and experience of the power of the Resurrection, beginning right now and stretching into eternity. Our frequent liturgical celebrations present us with a special opportunity and not an imposition. Liturgy is the "work" (that is what the Greek root word meant) of public worship. Lent can be a powerful liturgical season, if we participate.  However, it only works if you work it, and make it your own.

Why Forty Days?

Numbers have meaning in the Bible and the Jewish and Christian tradition, because the Jewish people and the early Christian community understood the presence of God in the entirety of human existence and lived an integrated spirituality. Our Baptism calls us to live in a naturally supernatural manner.

The Sacred Scriptures (the "Bible") speak to us on many levels. One level which we moderns in the West are often not aware of is its use of numbers as symbolic language. Symbols open us to a deeper truth. For example, it is no accident that a child is usually in the in the womb for forty weeks, the fullness of the term. Forty stands for a time of fulfillment or completion.

There are several forty periods in the history of Salvation found in the Hebrew Scriptures, what Christians call the Old Testament of our Bible. For example, the Forty days Moses was on the Mountain and received the Law (Exodus 24:18). The story of the spies recorded in the Book of Numbers results in their being sentenced for Forty years, (Numbers 13:26, 14:34).

There were Forty days for the great Prophet Elijah in Horeb, (1 Kings 19:8). The prophet Jonah was sent to Ninevah for Forty days. And, of course, the Israelites wandered in the desert for Forty years before they were delivered from the bondage of the Egyptians and passed into the Land of Promise.

Forty is not an arbitrary number. Our forty-day observance of the Holy Season of Lent inserts us into this entire stream of God's action in human history and invites us to participate afresh every year. Each forty day or forty-year period in the biblical accounts presaged something new. So it can be for our forty days of Lenten observance.

However, the greatest significance of the number forty comes as God's entire plan of salvation was taken up and fulfilled in the mission of Jesus Christ. In Him is revealed the New Israel of the Church and He is the New Lawgiver. He, is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word Incarnate. The world was created through Him. (John 1) Through His Incarnation, creation begins again. He gives the forty day Lenten period its penultimate meaning.

This One in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells shows us the very meaning of our lives. He "fully reveals man to himself" in the words of the Council Fathers. (GS #22) He also shows us the great dignity to which we are now called - and actually capacitated by grace, to become, in, through and with Him.

This forty day period of repentance, fasting and prayer calls us to enter into the desert with Him. There, He who knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21), the One who became a man like us "in all things but sin" enters into the temptations we face and shows us the way to overcome them in our own lives. (Heb. 2 and 4) He was tempted of the Devil for Forty days in the desert (Matthew 4:2). In Him we can now overcome temptation and progress toward the freedom to which we are all called.

After a saving life of selfless love, Jesus mounted the Second Tree of the Cross and opened His arms to embrace the world which had rejected God. Now, His voluntary sacrifice of Love complete, the Tomb is empty. Death, the final enemy and result of sin, has been defeated and the fruits of the redemption are being borne!

He was seen in His resurrected glory by his disciples for Forty days. (Acts 1:2) During that time he continued to prepare the New Israel, His Church, which had been birthed from the water and blood which flowed from His wounded side on Calvary. To that Church he entrusted his continuing redemptive mission until His glorious return. To that Church he entrusted His Word, His Spirit and Sacramental grace.

Our Forty-day observance of this Holy Season of Lent inserts us, every year of our life, into this stream of God's action in human history. It invites us anew to participate in the great mystery of living and saving faith in the Savior in order to appropriate it more fully and make it our own.

Being Made New

Each of the forty day or forty year periods mentioned above was preparatory. So it is for us we enter each year into Lent. We can progress in the call to be made new. The Apostle Paul reminded the Corinthians, "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come." (2 Cor. 5:17)

The Church, our Mother and Teacher, invites us to empty ourselves through fasting, abstinence, prayer, charity and almsgiving. We are invited to recommit ourselves to do battle with the disordered appetites and passions which are a bad fruit of the effects of sin and hold us back.

During Lent we are called to engage in spiritual warfare. (See, 2 Cor. 10:4, Eph. 6: 14 - 16) We do battle with the "world", the "flesh" and, yes, the Devil. Satan, the father of lies (John 8:44), is the enemy of Jesus Christ and therefore the enemy of all who seek to attain the fullness of salvation in Him. During these forty days we are invited to say "yes" to every grace offered to us. However, the choice is ours.

Who Needs Lent? We Do

The Church uses the symbols of nature to point us toward and help us obtain a supernatural effect. These symbols, such as the ashes placed upon our heads of the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, also need to be viewed with the eyes of living faith. They are both a symbol of our mortality and an invitation to continual repentance and reform, to ongoing conversion.

The Ordo (Order of Service) offers two forms which are to be said by the Priest or the Deacon as the Ashes, made from the burnt Palms from the prior year's Passion/Palm Sunday, are rubbed into the penitent's forehead as a sign of their voluntary penitence; "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel" or, "Remember you are dust and to dust you will return". They both remind us of our utter dependence upon God.

Every Lent is a reminder of our mortality. "Remember you are dust and to dust you will return" is a time for us to pause and reflect. In an age drunk on self-worship, a reminder of the brevity of our days should draw us to our knees. From there we can look up at the Cross which bridges heaven and earth. There at the altar of the New World, Christ became our Paschal Sacrifice. There we can climb into His wounded side.

After receiving the ashes, we are exhorted to leave the Church as penitents and pilgrims and continue in a Christian way of life every day. We are invited to allow the light of the Holy Spirit to penetrate the dark places in our daily lives.  We are exhorted to make a good confession, pray more, genuinely fast, read and live in God's Word, frequent the Sacraments, and engage in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  

If we enter into Lent with our entire person, it can draw us, at its' closure, into a deeper embrace and experience of the power of the Resurrection, beginning right now and stretching into eternity. Our frequent liturgical celebrations present us with a special opportunity and not an imposition. Liturgy is the "work" (that is what the Greek root word meant) of public worship. Lent can be a powerful liturgical season, if we participate.  However, it only works if you work it, and make it your own.
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This article is adapted from the first of a new series of "Short Books for Christian Living" by Deacon Fournier which will soon be available. Deacon Keith Fournier is an ordained minister in the Church, a Catholic Deacon, with an outreach to the broader Christian community. He and his wife Laurine have been married for forty years. They have five grown children and seven grandchildren.

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