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Lent’s Door
Next Wednesday, as our liturgical calendar summons us once again to the important season of Lent, it could be a significant spiritual help to us and a desirable deepening of our involvement in this holy time were we to start to give some of our attention in these coming Lenten weeks to the words of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. Reading his words and studying his teaching, which come not only from his grace of office as Christ’s Vicar on earth, but also from his profound theological learning and his long experience in the care of souls as a pastor and teacher, might be for us something most intellectually and spiritually stimulating.

The Pope says, “Precisely due to the richness of its symbols and of its biblical and liturgical texts, Ash Wednesday is considered the door to Lent. The Ash Wednesday liturgy indicates that the fundamental dimension of Lent is in the conversion of the heart to God. This is the evocative message contained in the traditional rite of ashes. It is a rite with a double meaning. The first is related to interior change, to conversion and penance, while the second recalls our precarious human condition, as is easy to understand from the two different formulas that could accompany the gesture (of imposing blessed ashes on our heads)”.

The two verbal formulas in the ritual which the Pope speaks about and which may be used are: “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel” and “Remember man that you are dust and unto dust you will return.” The Bishop of Rome also notes that there are two contrasting focuses in the first two readings of the Ash Wednesday Mass text. In the first reading “the Prophet Joel (Joel 2:12-18) speaks of the future day of the Lord as a day of terrible judgement.” In the second reading, “Saint Paul (2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2), referring to the words of the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 49:8), speaks of the acceptable time and the day of salvation. The future day of the Lord has become today. The terrible day is transformed by the cross and resurrection into a day of salvation and this day is now. As we hear in the Gospel verse: If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts. The call to conversion and to penance resounds today with all its strength, so that its echo accompanies us in every moment of life.”

Big Three
Lent, the Pope reminds us, “is not simply a memory of the past nor an empty anticipation of the future. On the contrary, it intends to help the faithful along an interior journey, the journey of conversion and reconciliation, in order to reach the glory of the heavenly Jerusalem where God dwells.” In the Gospel passage which is designated to be proclaimed during the Ash Wednesday Mass (Matthew 6:1-18), “Jesus indicates some of the useful instruments to accomplish an authentic interior and communitarian renewal: works of charity (almsgiving), prayer, and penance (fasting).”

“These are the three fundamental practices also dear to the Hebrew tradition because they contribute to the purification of man before God. Such exterior gestures, when done to please God and not to obtain the approval and admiration of men, are acceptable to God if they express the determination of the heart to serve Him with simplicity and generosity.”
The Holy Father points out that “these works of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting, together with every effort of conversion, find their most lofty significance and value in the Eucharist, the center and culmination of the life of the Church and of the history of salvation.” In the post-communion prayer of the Ash Wednesday liturgy, we say, “May this sacrament we have received, O Father, sustain us on our Lenten way, make holy our fasting, and render it efficacious to heal our souls.”

Chrysostom
In addition to the merely symbolic fasting and occasional abstinence from meat which current Church law requires of Catholics on certain days of Lent, there also should be in every Catholic’s personal Lenten program some further and very real penitential acts of self-denial and mortification to accompany and reinforce the internal dispositions of heart and soul appropriate to this sacred season. In speaking about this, Pope Benedict XVI quotes the great and holy Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint John Chrysostom:
“As at the end of winter the summer season returns and the navigator launches his boat into the sea, the soldier polishes his arms and trains his horse for battle, the farmer sharpens his scythe, the strengthened wayfarer continues his journey, and the athlete sets aside his outer clothes and prepares for the race, so too, at the start of this Lenten fast, like returning to a spiritual springtime, we polish our arms like soldiers, we sharpen our scythes like farmers, as mariners we launch the boat of our spirit to confront the waves of senseless passions, like the wayfarer we continue our journey to heaven, and like the athlete we prepare ourselves for the contests ahead by totally setting aside everything that could encumber us.”

Penance
The Supreme Pontiff says, “Fasting (and other forms of penance), to which the Church invites us in this particular season, is not motivated by the physical or aesthetic order, but stems from the need that man has for an interior purification that detoxifies him from the pollution of sin and evil. It educates him to that healthy renunciation which releases the believer from slavery to self and renders him more attentive and open to listen to God and to be at the service of his brethren.”

Father Jean Galot observes, “Our spiritual life always risks nodding off. It regularly needs to be reawakened and to find fresh encouragement. With Lent this can be done with a shake in order to make a fresh start. In this regard, Lent makes it possible to pause for reflection, which is helpful for taking stock of our inner situation and in deciding what can be improved. It offers us a way out of an excessively instinctive routine and enables us to see how to resist the onslaught of the numerous attractions that tend to fritter away our lives. Lent is a most intense season of Christian life, a time of spiritual striving, when, laboring up the ascent toward the coming celebrations of the passion and resurrection of Christ, Christians are to become more aware of the efforts they must expend in order to share wholeheartedly in our Savior’s sacrifice and in the joy of His Easter triumph.”