 |
|
| Fr. Lawrence Oparaji |
Ash Wednesday marked the most I had seen people in church since the lockdown and since the beginning of our reopening efforts.
The 5:30 p.m. Ash Wednesday Mass at the parish was socially distanced standing room only, and of course, following all the COVID-19 protocols.
I was greatly inspired to see so many people but could not help but wonder what the driving factor was.
To be honest and blunt, the ashes we receive on Ash Wednesday are just ashes from burnt palms blessed in the previous year on Palm Sunday and blessed again before being scattered on our head (that is all it is).
But at every Mass, at every other Wednesday Mass, we receive something more extraordinary than those ashes; we receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ our Lord and Savior in the Eucharist.
Why do the ashes appeal to us
I could not help but wonder and reflect further on this. Upon further reflection, I came to the realization that the ashes on Ash Wednesday call and appeal to something in us; it appeals to something more profound than any usual day of our lives.
It appeals to an ultimate statistic that we all know, cannot deny, and have no answer for: all of us will eventually die.
It is a day when we get an opportunity to pause and reflect on a subject that we do not usually get very many opportunities to talk about or reflect on: the shortness of our life here on earth in comparison to the grand scheme of eternity.
Ash Wednesday calls us to ask, “Is there more to life than this, than the way I am living?”
It is a day when we are reminded, to paraphrase C. S Lewis, “that we have a desire for more, and nothing in this world seems to satisfy that desire and that the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
The ashes symbolize and point to something greater, something more profound. They remind us of our origin and our destiny.
In the liturgy for Ash Wednesday, after the priest blesses the ashes, he says to the people, “Remember that you are dust, and unto dust, you shall return.”
Those words remind us of the emptiness of our lives. They remind us that God made us out of nothing, out of dust. And to this dust, we shall someday return. Those words point to the very beginning and end of our life.
More than dust
But there is an even deeper part to Ash Wednesday; although we receive dust, there is also an inner desire, an inner hope that prays that our story does not just end in dust, and often there is a further desire to know more about what we need to do in order for our story to not just end in dust.
Praise be to Jesus Christ that the human story does not end in dust and decay but in the resurrection and new life!
One of my favorite stanzas from the poem “If Christ Had Not Come” by Robert S. Lehigh goes like this: “If Christ had not come from Heaven above, there would be no grace, no peace, joy, or love. No hope for the future . . . just lostness and darkness and black clouds of sin.”
Could we imagine what that would be like? I know we sometimes look at our world and think it is so broken, but have we ever paused to think about what it could have been like without Christ and Christianity’s message, without the blessed hope for a blessed future.
Thanks be to the Father for His Son and for His self-gift that has opened a new path for us, a path that calls us forth from dust and decay into new and redeemed life for eternity.
But following this path requires repentance, it requires obedience, and it requires surrender.
Dying to self
C. S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, says that “[Repentance] means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into . . . It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death.”
That definitely does not sound easy. As a Christian
disciple myself, I know this can be hard and challenging, but I also know that the truth is that it is good (for me, for my relationship with God and you, for my eternal salvation) and possible, if we are intentional about it and if we come to truly know and believe in the love that God has for us and the salvation that he offers us if we remain in His love and friendship.
Take a look around us; in order to achieve and attain anything truly good, we have to sacrifice, we need discipline. How much more should that be the case in our pursuit of Christ — the way, the truth, the life, and THE Answer to every human longing?
Jesus Christ is goodness personified, and he is the highest and perfect good. Look at the cross, the price paid for our salvation; it was not an easy price; it was a price that cost the life of the Son of God. Look at the early Christian Martyrs and the Saints – they “fasted,” and now they “feast.”
Take up your cross
One of the greatest Catholic minds in American church history, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, once wrote that “Satan may appear in many disguises like Christ . . . but Satan never has and never will appear with scars. Only heaven’s love can show the marks of love’s greatest gift.”
Put simply, Christianity without the cross, without our own efforts to cooperate with grace, without daily offering ourselves as living sacrifices, without prioritizing a relationship with Christ and trusting in his providence, without dying to ourselves, is meaningless, futile, incomplete, impotent, stagnant, and unredeemable.
So, in the words of Charles William Everest, “Take up your cross and follow Christ, nor think till death to lay it down. For only he who bears the cross may hope to wear the glorious crown.”
I always like to think that one of the most remarkable pieces of advice I got from my seminary days was from one of my professors, who would always tell us “never preach anything about the demands of the Christian life without telling the people of God about the availability of God’s grace.”
This advice has stayed with me. I share that with you to encourage you and embolden you to approach God as your loving Father during this holy season of Lent.
We are limited in so many ways and easily overwhelmed by life, but God is unlimited in every way, and through Jesus has told us in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
We do not have to or need to do this alone. In fact, it is impossible to do this alone. Plus, why should we?
Especially when we have God as our Father, Jesus as our Brother, the Holy Spirit as our strength and comforter, and the Church as our Mother to feed us and nourish us on this journey that is difficult, challenging but in the end good, beautiful, true, and possible!
Fr. Lawrence Oparaji is a parochial vicar at Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Parish, Sun Prairie.