Ash Wednesday 2011

In their affliction, they shall look for me: “Come, let us return to the LORD, for it is he who has rent, but he will heal us; he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds.

He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence.

Let us know, let us strive to know the LORD; as certain as the dawn is his coming, and his judgment shines forth like the light of day! He will come to us like the rain, like spring rain that waters the earth.”

— Hosea 6:1-3

(Also, check out this video of Archbishop Dolan on Ash Wednesday.)

A Reflection for Holy Week

This year, I was able to come back to New York to spend Holy Week and Easter in my home diocese!

Since I have been busy traveling, attending the Holy Week services, visiting close friends and mentors, praying with the wonderful nuns who graciously invited me to stay at their New York City monastery--and not to mention finishing my thesis!--here is a reprint of my Good Friday post from last year. I actually wrote this when I was a senior in college (in 2008), for an evening of reflection on the “Seven Last Words” at Seton Hall.

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“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” —Mark 15:34

In my mind at least, these words are the very essence of the entire Passion. Even while Jesus’ physical and emotional torments were truly horrible, they are nothing when compared with this, Christ’s spiritual suffering.

God is truly the source and sustainer of everything good. Without Him, even things which we would consider good for their own sake—things like friendship and human sympathy, or natural beauty or artistic accomplishment—are empty and valueless. God is incalculably greater than all that He has made, and He is, ultimately, the only source of all joy.

This is why we are called to love God “with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength” (cf. Deuteronomy 6:5), because as we grow in our faith God should become everything to us. I believe this is also why thousands of martyrs were able to relinquish all the things they held most dear in their earthly life; they understood that they were trading a small puddle for the ocean.

Of course Christians are still human, and we will feel pain when painful things happen to us. If we were to become seriously ill or lose someone close to us, it would be completely normal and healthy for us to grieve. Still, our faith could help us bear our grief with peace and hope.

But what if God Himself were to abandon us? Theologically, we know that God would never forsake any of us, His children. But in some sense, the question is not irrelevant.

For example, we now know that Bl. Mother Theresa of Calcutta, like many other great saints, spent most of her life under the subjective impression that God had rejected her, despite the abundant evidence to the contrary. Even if we ourselves never have a similar experience, we may still find it troubling that God would seem to behave this way towards someone who loved Him so much.

On a corporate level, the people of Israel—the nation whom God had chosen to be His own in a special way—seemed to have felt that God abandoned them during the period of the Babylonian captivity. Their experience is recorded in some of the psalms, as well as in the haunting lyrics of the book of Lamentations:

He has broken my teeth with gravel,
pressed my face in the dust;
My soul is deprived of peace,
I have forgotten what happiness is;
I tell myself my future is lost,
all that I hoped from the Lord.

The thought of my homeless poverty
is wormwood and gall;
Remembering it over and over
leaves my soul downcast within me.

(Lamentations 3:16-20)

In some ways, many of the crises plaguing the Church today can evoke similar reactions from contemporary Catholics. While issues such as the “culture of death,” the breakdown of the traditional family, scandal within the Church, and the increasing secularity of our society may not seem quite as dramatic as the Babylonian exile, they are nevertheless able to shake many people’s faith and prompt them to question Providence.

And yet even apart from all of this, this question is important simply because it was a part of Jesus’ Passion. By virtue of our baptism, we are all called to be with Christ in His Passion to at least some degree. As Jesus said, “Whoever wishes to be my disciple must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24) and “Can you drink to cup that I am to drink?” (Matthew 20:22)

We don’t stay with Jesus in His Passion because we like suffering, but rather because we love Jesus. I think probably most of us can wrap our minds around the idea of staying with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane—we probably feel that we could keep watch for an hour.
Perhaps with great difficulty, we can even manage to stay with Jesus at the scourging, along the Via Dolorosa, and at the crucifixion. But how could we possibly manage to be with Jesus during the moment he uttered this cry of complete desolation? It would almost seem akin to finding ourselves in Hell!

I honestly don’t know exactly how it is that we can remain with Jesus even here. The only thing I can say is that if God calls us to it, then He must give us the strength that we would need.

But here in the deepest darkness it’s important to remember some other words from the book of Lamentations, found even here in the midst of arguably the most anguished verses in all of Scripture:

The favors of the Lord are not exhausted
His mercies are not spent;
They are renewed every morning,
so great is His faithfulness.
My portion is the Lord, says my soul;
therefore I will hope in Him.

Good is the Lord to the one who waits for Him,
to the soul that seeks Him;
It is good to hope in silence
for the saving help of the Lord.
It is good for a man to bear
the yolk from his youth.

Let him sit alone and in silence,
when it is laid upon him.
Let him put his mouth to the dust;
there may yet be hope.

(Lamentations 3:22-29)

If, with the help of grace, we choose to continue to love God through darkness, He will use it as an opportunity to configure us more closely to Christ. Our faith will be strengthened, our hope will be increased, and our love will be purified.

Even while we will seem to have lost all of our joy, we will be given newer, deeper joys that we would not have understood before. We will understand Christ in a new way when he said, “Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever. I hold the keys to death and the netherworld.” (Revelation 1:18)

And this is the Pascal mystery—the center of our faith and the gift we in inherited at Baptism.

Ash Wednesday

Here is the first section of one of my favorite poems, “Ash Wednesday” by T.S. Eliot. T.S. Eliot was born and educated in the United States, but later moved to England and became a British subject (and so both countries claim him as their own). He lived and wrote during the twentieth century, and his earlier poems aimed at capturing the sense of moral aimlessness that pervaded the culture of that era.

After a religious conversion, Eliot’s later poetry reflected his new-found spiritual insights; and, while still recognizing the reality of existential despair, his later poetry expressed to the reader the possibility of true and real redemption. (By the way, his later poems make excellent—if challenging—spiritual reading. Right now, I often bring his “Four Quartets” with me to the chapel when I make my Holy Hour.)

In “Ash Wednesday,” Eliot describes the banality and weariness of sin, but also alludes to the possibility of salvation, and poignantly expresses the need to “cast all our worries on God, because He cares for us.” (cf. 1 Peter 5:7)

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Ash Wednesday (part I)

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

— T.S. Eliot (1927)

Just for fun...this is me with my ashes this year. The priest who gave me the ashes really got me good this time!