We read in Saint John’s Gospel, “’And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where [I] am going you know the way.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:3-6)
That Gospel passage came to mind on Ash Wednesday as I reflected on the many people coming to our church for ashes throughout the day to begin the season of Lent. Aren’t we so often like weary travelers, overwhelmed by the world, just looking for a place to rest for awhile? God’s Church, here at St. Anthony’s is the place He has prepared for us here on earth to rest for awhile. It is an experience of our eternal rest with the Lord here and now. This is why Ash Wednesday is one of my favorite days of the year. It is a day that makes me feel great to be a priest. Often enough, it has been a long time since many of us have stopped to rest and to enter into the peace and serenity of the Lord. We come for ashes, but I notice the hunger and thirst in people for so much more. I feel so blessed to be a priest and to be able to be there in His name to welcome each person to our church, to pray with and bless each person, to hear a story or two or perhaps even a confession, to share God’s Word of hope, and to offer the Bread of Life, our Lord Himself, in Holy Communion. It is good to see people leaving not only with ashes on their foreheads, but with Christ in their hearts, our Bread for the journey. It made me think of my Italian grandmother. She could never let you leave on an empty stomach. I may not be much of a cook like my grandmother or my mom, but I am glad to be able to make sure that no one leaves here with an empty heart when it comes to spiritual nourishment!
Lent is such a gift. It isn’t easy, but that doesn’t make it any less of a gift. The gift is that Lent puts the cross right back in the center of our life. That doesn’t sound like much of a gift! Given a choice between comfort or the cross, if you’re like me, there have been too many occasions when I have chosen the former over the latter. Aren’t there times when we would prefer a Christianity of comfort rather than a Christianity of the cross? In those moments, we are more like the criminal who reviled Jesus and said, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” In other words, “get off the cross.” It is very diabolical. Peter said something similar to Jesus at one time as well. Jesus clearly identified the cross with the very essence of His being as The Christ, the Messiah, and as our Savior. Peter eventually recognized and embraced the cross as Jesus did, namely, as an essential and necessary means of our salvation.
We have all of Lent to come to a deeper understanding of the necessity of the cross as Peter did and to learn how to embrace the cross with more fervor than our own comfort. For now, let us recognize that prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are an experience of the Way of the Cross. When we give up our time in prayer to the Lord, our money and material possessions for the poor, and deprive ourselves of food and other things, we are detaching ourselves from the world and attaching ourselves to God in a more complete way. We become more focused on praising and worshiping the Creator as opposed to His creation or creatures. This giving away, depriving, and detaching is described as self-sacrifice. It is the way we give ourselves to God and others. It is a sign of our love. It is a sign of the cross. It makes present in our lives and in the lives of others, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, the ultimate sign of love.
We have many opportunities here at St. Anthony’s to enrich our Lenten journey. Please keep an eye on our bulletin, our emails sent through Flocknotes, and on our parish website. Let us keep one another in prayer this Lent!