Fr. Adam Voisin's Stuff
Homily for Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is like the head of a river, spilling into all of Lent a variety of different themes that we encounter weaving throughout this holy and sacred season, themes that we find in the liturgy today, as they will continue to unfold during the next 40 days. We could look at a few of them. One that jumps out at us is right from the gospel. Jesus speaks about these three traditional forms of piety, prayer, arms giving and fasting. These are three things. Notice when he says, when he refers to each one, he says, "When you fast, when you pray, when you give arms, not if, but when." These are things that are to be a part of our life, our Christian spiritual life, not only throughout Lent, but throughout the entire year. We fast. We do these things of self-denial, in imitation of Christ. We do these things. We give up stuff, right? We give up chocolate or Facebook or sugar in our coffee, whatever it may be. These are our ways of fasting through Lent. At least some of them, we give alms, we sacrifice our money so that we can attend to the needs of others, especially the least in our society, the ones with whom Christ identifies himself, that which you did to the least of my brothers and sisters, he says, "You did to me." There are ways of extending generosity to Christ himself. Of course, our prayer is our way of sacrificing our time to spend that time with the God who loves us, to spend more time with him deepening our relationship with him. These are three things that we hear every Ash Wednesday in these readings in that carry out throughout Lent. We also have what I think is one of the most striking opening prayers throughout the liturgical year today, the collet, the first prayer that the priest says. Listen to this. This kind of unfolds another theme that we have throughout this holy season. Grant, O Lord, that we may begin with holy fasting this campaign of Christian service, so that as we take up battle against spiritual evils, we may be armed with weapons of self-restraint. You have this image of a soldier about to go to battle who needs to kind of strengthen up and get ready, and that's also what we do during Lent. As the prayer says, we arm ourselves with these weapons of self-restraint. We learn to deny ourselves, to become stronger, so that we can be armed against spiritual evils, against sin. The idea here is that if I can say no to chocolate for 40 days, then my will become strong, and I can say no to sin. If I can say no to Facebook, I can say no to something else on the internet that I ought not to be looking at. If I can learn to say no to sugar in my coffee, I can learn to say no to gossip or speaking critically of others. You see how if I learn self-restraint in one hour area, I become strong to resist, as the prayer says, these spiritual evils sin in our life. Here's another theme that we find today and throughout the season of Lent. Another one happens very dramatically. In a few minutes, we'll have the imposition of the ashes on our heads. It's one of the more dramatic signs throughout the liturgical year. We're putting ashes on our heads. It's something that makes us decidedly Catholic. If you get the ashes in the morning, you walk around all day, everyone sees them, and they know who we are, right? We're Catholic. This is something we do in particular. These ashes themselves are a very profound sign, something you even see throughout the Old Testament, a sign of repentance before God, of atonement, of asking for His mercy, His forgiveness, these kinds of things. The ashes have a variety of reasons, but two of them are articulated in those words that the minister says when he or she imposes them on our head. We know there's two options, and depending on who you receive ashes from tonight, you'll hear one of them. One of them is repent and believe the good news. These ashes are a sign of that repentance, and they are also a sign of what we're to do all through Lent, to take stock of where we are. Lent is also this time of self-assessment or introspection, asking where am I before the Lord? Are there areas in my life, areas of sin that have crept up, that need dealing with, that I ought to be attentive to, that I can kind of fight in a particular way during the season of Lent and keep fighting after Lent to kind of intensify these efforts? So that we repent, so that we may be faithful to the gospel, that we may be more faithful, more obedient to the will of Christ, that we may turn away from sin, and the other one is remember, remember your dust, and unto dust you will return. I love it how it begins, remember, remember that. We can easily forget, right? We can easily forget that we are dust and unto dust we will return, that we're mortal, that we are the created God is the Creator. That's who we are before Him, and it's so easy to forget. God is the One who is all-powerful, He's all-good, He's all-loving, and we're really none of these things, right? We're not all-powerful, we're not all-knowing, we're not all-good, but we might think we are, we might get the idea that we are, that we're all-powerful, you know, especially if we have money and we have maybe success and power and, you know, public acclimation and these kinds of things, we can get kind of ahead of ourselves and start thinking we're bigger than we are, we may become too all-knowing and we think we can choose, right? We can think what's right, what's wrong, and what we think is what matters, not what God says. We forget that He's the One who speaks and we're the One who listens. He's the teacher and we are the disciples and we can, we can forget that we're not all-good, only God is all-good and we are not, we fall into sin, we're weak, we're wounded, we have need of repentance, and that's what this season is about. That, and this is, this is a healthy attitude before God. One of the, I know it's in the seminary, there is a great bishop there and he'd always tell us, "Remember, guys, there's one God and you're not Him." Just remember, we can easily forget that so easily, but before God having this attitude, it cultivates within us a humility before Him, the humility that's so important if we want to, if we want to grow in our spiritual life, if we want to grow in love at any of the virtues, it's really the, the cine qua non, the queen of, of all of the virtues. We find three times in the scriptures, once in the Old Testament, twice in the new, that God resists the proud, but He gives His grace to the humble. If we want His grace through this holy season, we need this, and through our lives, we need this, this humility before Him, and it's also an imitation of Christ. He Himself was humble, even to the point of death, death on a cross, and it was because of that, because of that, St. Paul says in his order to the Philippians that, that God exalted Him and gave Him the name above every other name, so that at His name, every knee would bend in heaven on earth and under the earth. With this virtue of humility before God, we receive His grace, and we learn how to love others. We, we can't really love others unless we're humble before them. We can't be respectful of others if we don't put them before us. We can't sacrifice for others if we don't put their interest before our own. We, we won't be generous before others if we don't think they have needs, and we think we're the ones with all the needs. We, without this humility, we, we begin to expect that the whole world should accommodate itself to me. You know, me, me, me, everyone should just do what I want, and humility is that other way where we look to the interests of others before our own. So you see, it's really the way that, that we, we follow the, the two great commandments that Christ laid out for us, to love the Lord our God, with all our heart, our mind, our strength, everything we have, and to love our neighbor as ourself, and all of these themes that we find, and there are others as well in the liturgy today and throughout Lent, they're all oriented towards that great goal of Easter. We are, we can easily forget that too, that all of this is pointed towards the great climax of this sacred season, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that He has risen from the dead, and He's made a promise to us. He's made a promise to you and to me, each of us, that if we are faithful to these kinds of things, if we live our life as a disciple of Christ and friendship with God, that at the last day, that just as Christ was raised from the dead, He will raise us up as well. [BLANK_AUDIO]