Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:12-18
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2
Matthew 6:1-6,16-18

THIS LENTEN SEASON TRUE CONVERSATION IS REQUIRED

Today we begin the Lenten season. A season of fasting and prayer. St. John Chrysostom says that fasting is the soul of prayer. Fasting has long been considered a physical and spiritual practice of self-discipline.  St. Thomas Aquinas mentions that we fast for three reasons.

This includes; restraining the desire of the flesh, raising the mind to contemplate sublime things, and making satisfaction for our sins. More recently fasting has emerged as a popular secular dieting practice. 
Contemporary approaches to fasting include many other forms — from discipline regarding social media to thoughts and words, to sleeping in… as well as limitation of food and drink.

For Catholics, fasting is a collective penitential practice of biblical origin, traditionally involving partial or complete abstinence from food or drink. Pure and simple, fasting is a central Lenten practice along with prayer and almsgiving.

Our first reading for today sets out the challenge of Lent for us: a call from God to “return to God with your whole heart.”  Joel 2:12. An expression of penance was to tear one’s clothing. But God says: “Rend your hearts, not your garments.” We are to tear our hearts open.

Lay our hearts bear. The call is to go beyond an external return to God and return with our “whole heart.”The Lord Jesus Christ warns us not to parade ourselves like pagans when we fast but to return to God our Father.

As Christians, our wholehearted turning to God is in many spiritual conversions throughout our lives, as we fall more deeply in love with God, and all that God loves, the whole world. Pope Benedict XVI mentions that our fasting helps each one of us to make a complete gift of self to God. We might ask ourselves: where does our love for God and God’s word call us into deeper conversion this Lent?

This Lent God invites us to go beyond ourselves and lovingly reach out to others, to be aware of others’ needs, and to go out of ourselves to care for others – as does Jesus!  Our love is to flow from our relationship with Jesus:  unselfish and self-sacrificing, practical, transformative – Jesus’ love for us flows to all of God’s creation.

PRAYER
This Lenten Season may our personal fasting help foster a feasting of lasting and fruitful change of heart in both thought, word, and deed – the transforming Life and Love of Jesus Crucified for all creation. Amen.

Wishing you the best of the Lenten season.

Fr Joseph Osho