Ash Wednesday 22nd February 2012

Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.

With these words we receive the ashes of repentance.

We are all in need of conversion.

According to Scripture we, for whom the life of faith is routine, run the risk of being further away from the kingdom of God than those struggling towards God, his existence even, or wrestling with knowing what’s right for them but lacking the will to do it.

Let your hearts be broken not your garments torn Joel warns in the first reading as he hands on the Lord’s invitation to order a fast and proclaim a solemn assembly.

In Lent our taking up of new disciplines or giving up luxuries isn’t to be external but an instrument of deeper conversion, more sincere repentance.

We need to heed Isaiah who hands on the Lord’s complaint to his people who honour me with their lips while their hearts are far from me (Isaiah 29.13).

Conversion is a growth into spiritual integrity in which heart and lips harmonise. The Choristers’ Prayer captures this: Grant that what we sing with our lips, we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts, we may show forth in our lives.

In praying that hearts and lives come together we’re admitting our need of divine help for conversion is a work of God, an ongoing work right up to our dying day and in some sense beyond it.

Our call as Christians is to love God with our whole heart and our neighbour as ourselves.

How slothful am I about delving into Scripture or attending the eucharist so as to encounter the lovability of God? How many of my neighbours find a place on my heart?
Further than that how much compassion have I for myself?

So much of our bad behaviour springs from running away from a failure to face our own inadequacy lovingly.

Sinners sin – but Jesus loves them and so should we - starting with ourselves!

Sometimes our wrongdoing stings us more because it wounds the pride we’ve got in our self sufficiency.
Lent may be a call to build a right self-love upon our self-knowledge which might become a new wellspring of self-forgetfulness.

Know yourself. Love yourself. Forget yourself.

One of the most popular and well esteemed of spiritual directors, Fr Tony De Mello, was asked about how he heard God speaking to him.

He was quite a humourist and could use strong language.

I sense God saying to me, De Mello said, Tony you’re a bastard – but I love you.

A sobering thought, that a so-called religious expert could be thought of as such by God! Surely if God is God he must laugh at us more than he laments about us and so should we!

Let your hearts be broken not your garments torn... you honour me with your lips while your hearts are far from me.

Turn away from sin – the pretentiousness and outward conformity that hides a self-seeking heart - and be faithful to the Gospel.

Know yourself. Love yourself. Forget yourself.