Ash Wednesday - Mass: Joel 2:12-18; 2 Cor 5:20-6:2; Matt 6:1-6, 16-18 Scripture: "Rend your hearts and not your garments."
Reflection: St. Paul tells us that Christ suffered so that we could become the very holiness of God. Pope John Paul II once described holiness as intimacy with God, as an imitation of Christ, and as an unreserved love for others and for the Church. Really only God can make us holy. Who can force inti¬macy with God, or simply will to have an unreserved love for all people? But God doesn't force our hand. We culti¬vate a posture that makes us good soil for the Word of God to sprout and grow in us. The Scriptures today offer won¬derful clues about this cultivation. It begins with a heart rent. If we wish to maintain the facade that the status quo is adequate, then Lent really means nothing. "Even now," Joel says, -return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments." Jesus too commends us to spiritual practice that is both truehearted and humble. Lent is a time of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer. We give alms to become freed from our greed and freed to recog¬nize that we are united with each other. We fast so as to make our bodies living symbols of our deeper hunger and thirst for holiness. We make extra time for prayer during Lent so that we may come to an ever-deepening intimacy with Him.
Meditation: How can my Lent be a time of conversion, a time for holiness?
Prayer: Spirit of God, rend my heart that it may become soil for your Word to grow. Transform me into the very ho¬liness of God.
I trust that the Lenten Season will be a time of grace, renewal and conversion!
Fr. Phil
