The ashes we receive on Ash Wednesday (February 17, 2021) are a sign of our resolve to enter more deeply into prayer, fasting, almsgiving, acts of charity, etc., as we travel the 40 days of Lent. We pray that the Lenten journey helps us grow in our relationship with God as we prepare for Holy Week and the wonderful Easter Season.
The website www.ignatianspirituality.comrecently featured an article by Nancy Small on how the ashes can help make Lent more meaningful for us. Here are a few thoughts from that article:
“Maybe we’ll take an interior look at where God may be nudging us toward growth or change. Are there patterns of behavior that may be ready for the ash heap? Has dust settled on our souls, because we’ve been lax in tending to our spiritual practices? Do we carry within us ashes of loss or regret? Are there areas where repentance or conversion is needed? Is something preventing us from blossoming into the fullness of who God calls us to be?
Maybe we’ll extend our Lenten gaze outward as well. Can our ashes connect us more deeply with the crucifixion of Christ in our world today? Could we hold in prayer the human deaths brought about by illness, injury, and injustice this past year? Can we include in our lament places reduced to ash by natural disasters and a planet in peril? Can we consider how our action or inaction contributes to societal suffering and connects us with it?”
This year, due to the pandemic, we are being directed to offer a “contactless” distribution of the ashes. Instead of imprinting a cross on your forehead, we will only be able to sprinkle ashes on your head. No matter how we wear the ashes, let’s allow them to be, more importantly, a spiritual clothing of our inward condition. In the days of the Old Testament, such a symbol of wearing “sackcloth and ashes” made one’s change of heart visible. They demonstrated the sincerity, and the humility, of one’s need for repentance.
In the spirit of Psalm 30, may the ashes we receive “clothe me with joy” because God loves me so much and gives me so many opportunities for a change of heart, to be transformed into a brighter image of His presence in the world today.
LENTEN GUIDELINES
As a time of abstinence, those Catholics 14 and older are obligated to abstain from eating meat on Ash Wednesday and all the Fridays of Lent. Additionally, healthy adults ages 18-59 are also asked to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday by only eating one full meal and two smaller meals on those days. Those with a medical condition that makes fasting inadvisable are not obligated to fast, but they should perform another act of penance or charity.