Ash Wednesday
“Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”
What is Ash Wednesday?
From Anglican Pastor:
“Lent is a season of repentance, fasting, and self-reflection. Of course, all of this happens with the sure knowledge of God’s love and grace to us through Christ. Lent and Ash Wednesday are in no way about condemnation. They are a time in which human beings, given a pronouncement of forgiveness and absolution through Christ, can be honest with God, with ourselves, and with each other. With the terror of judgment removed, we can speak the truth.” Read more here…
From Kate Bowler:
“This beautiful and humbling ritual is perhaps the clearest statement that we will ever hear about our status as temporary. Humans are such transient and fragile beings, so unnecessary to the functioning of the universe. Our presence is precarious. We will search in vain for any guarantees of our continued health, future success, or, even, the promise of tomorrow.” Read more here…
I am reminded daily, all day long of my own mortality.
From the effort it takes to rise and prepare for a day, through the limits I feel during the day, to the exhaustion I feel at the end of the day, I know know that there is far more time behind me than in front of me.
Every day I am reminded that I am a broken person living in a broken world, with other broken people.
I cover the fear this creates in me with faith in my pills, faith in my religion, and faith in myself.
Some days I can even pretend that it’s all not really that broken at all.
I can use the word “broken” instead of “sinful” with no crisis of conscious.
I can pretend that I’m not a real sinner and that sin isn’t ravaging everything God and I call good.
My theologians tell me that I’m in Christ and therefore I’m already justified and sanctified.
Ask my family about that…
Today rips away the illusions and confronts me with the truth…the truth about myself and the truth about you.
It is a harsh truth, but the truth shall set us free.
Positionally, by the grace of God, I’m justified and sanctified.
Practically, I’m often mistaken for an unbeliever.
The ashes will remind me of where I started and where I’ll end…and what God wants from me in between the journey too and from the dust.
Today is the day when our vision can be the clearest…if we choose to see.
Amen. Amen. Beautiful.
From dust you came and from dust you shall return… and so shall we all.
The Lord be with you!
The Lord be with you, as well my dear friend…
The Orthodox don’t observe Ash Wednesday, but I think it is a lovely tradition. (We have our own penitential traditions to start off Lent, which begins this Monday in Ortholandia.)
This is CHEESE WEEK!
It’s the week before Lent where we don’t eat, what we charmingly call “flesh foods” (but can eat everything else) in prep for Lent proper, when it’s all vegan, all the time.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna980786
From our friends in Utah.
Late to the party here. I posted this on another blog of which we do not speak of here, and I think it would be of better service here.
This is the third year that I have practiced Lent. Here are a few things I have learned.
Lent brings me into greater communion with Jesus in the context of His forty days of fasting in the wilderness.
Lent reminds me of mine and other’s humanity, and that we all will return to dust. That is humbling, and places the love of God for me at its proper, higher level. That means I learn to reverance God greater.
Lent allows me comprehend just a bit better that Jesus is near the brokenhearted.
Lent takes me to the cross of Christ, of which without, there is no resurrection. I wore a crucifix last year during Lent, and will do the same this year.
Lent reminds me that God sees our sorrows, and that He “bore our sorrows and carried grief” (Isa 53:4).
Lent reminds me that “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).This is not because I gave something up for Lent, but the giving up of something teaches me through self-denial, spiritual disciplines, and the struggle of keeping a commitment, of the greater struggles that we all face periodically. The experience teaches me about my own flesh and its desires.
Lent, when done for the right reasons, is a greater recognition of our need for submission to the purgative work of the Holy Spirit.
Lent is not an observance of an elementary principle of the world, it is a spiritual pilgrimage within our larger spiritual journey.
Lent reminds me that it “is not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:5).