What has Ash Wednesday to say to us tonight?
It’s a powerful moment. Ash Wednesday is always a draw. It’s a sell-out every year. It speaks.
So, what does it say? The poor preacher can only flag up one or two things.
First, Ash Wednesday says “mercy”. “You are merciful to all, O Lord, and despise nothing that you have made. You overlook people’s sins, to bring them to repentance, and you spare them, for you are the Lord our God.” That’s from the OT book of Wisdom. We heard it as the Entrance Antiphon. Entrance Antiphons set the tone. Ash Wednesday speaks first of the Lord, of God, of our heavenly Father and of his Son Jesus Christ. And it speaks of someone “merciful to all” who doesn’t despise us. We may know people who despise us personally, and often we despise ourselves. But the talk here is of someone who doesn’t despise anything he has made, least of all his human creation. Here is someone who overlooks and spares, who is ready to welcome us back and inspires us to turn to him. At the head of Ash Wednesday and of everything stands the Father who runs to meet and throw his arms around his prodigal son. Here is the shepherd who untangles the tangled sheep and carries it home on his shoulders. Here stands the Lord who told the woman caught in adultery, “Neither do I condemn you”; who said to the paralytic, “Courage, my son, your sins are forgiven you”; who told the woman who bathed his feet with her tears, “Your sins are forgiven you”; the Lord who even prayed for those crucifying him, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”. How many saints and Popes these last 100 years or more have echoed the Book of Wisdom: “You are merciful to all, O Lord”: St Therese of Lisieux, St Faustina Kowalska, Padre Pio, Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis…
Ash Wednesday says “mercy”.
So today it’s in that direction we turn. When the gate to the football stand is opened the people flood in, or into the shops on Black Friday. God’s mercy is a space that’s always open, but now especially – 40 days of “open doors”. And Lady Lent, aka Mother Church, stands on the pavement, as it were, and beckons us inside. Like St Paul, she says, “Be reconciled to God”. St Paul’s word “reconciled” means settle your accounts – make a good deal – and resolve your conflicts with your enemies. Make peace. There’s a second word for us. God’s Mercy, welcomed by us, means Peace within us. Lent is for making peace with God, with our conscience and, so far as possible, with one another. We have a Sacrament of Reconciliation to bring us “pardon and peace” – an open door. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are three inter-connected ways of finding this three-fold peace: with God, with ourselves, with one another. And if this peace, the peace of Christ, is in our lives, it’s not just ours, it goes beyond. It becomes a service to humanity suffering war, in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, the Congo… As Christians, we don’t live for ourselves; we are priests for the world.
Ash Wednesday, Lady Lent, Mother Church, say “mercy”, and mean it and offer it. They say “peace” and mean it and offer it. These things are near and real. If we welcome God’s mercy, peace is ours.
And we rise from the ashes – the ashes of the consequences of our sins, the ashes of the things we struggle with in life, the effects perhaps of what others and life have done to us; the experiences that leave us like Job “sitting in the ashes”. To rise from the ashes: this is the grace of Lent, a grace for us and a grace for the world, a grace of this Jubilee year of hope. To emerge as new, to be revitalised, re-energised, to make a comeback after things have gone wrong, however wrong, to live again after what feels like a death. We remember the ancient myth of the great eagle-like bird, the phoenix, with its glorious plumage and its beautiful singing: how after its long life, it would build a nest and set it alight, only to rise again from the ashes. It’s a myth pointing to Christ, to his death and resurrection. He’s the real Phoenix. He is our eagle, said Moses too, thinking of God’s care of Israel in the desert. “Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, bearing them on its pinions, the Lord alone guided [them]” (Dt 32:11:12). We’re all uplifted by Michael Joncas’ hymn: “And He will raise you up on eagles’ wings / Bear you on the breath of dawn / Make you to shine like the sun / And hold you in the palm of His hand.” This echoes the great Psalm of Lent and Compline, 91: “He will conceal you with his pinions and under his wings you will find refuge”. Remember from the Lord of the Rings, how the great eagle Gwaihir lifts up Sam and Frodo into safety as everything implodes around them.
On our foreheads the ashes become a prayer for mercy and peace. They express our turning to Christ, Christ our Eagle, our Phoenix, in whom we can rise from our ashes – and this year especially, the Jubilee Year of Hope.
