{"id":25340,"date":"2010-02-17T22:00:58","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T02:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2010\/02\/ash-wednesday-2010-conversion\/"},"modified":"2014-01-06T16:35:54","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T20:35:54","slug":"ash-wednesday-2010-conversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2010\/02\/ash-wednesday-2010-conversion\/","title":{"rendered":"Ash Wednesday 2010: Conversion goes against the current of mediocre morality"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"Ash<\/a>The last sentence of Pope Benedict’s Wednesday audience today gives us a clue as to the reason why we begin a religious season of conversion, a yearly season of purification, he says: “40 days of intense prayer and sincere penance, to be able to celebrate, purified and completely renewed in mind and spirit, the great mystery of her Son’s Easter.” This is the point of ashes, penance, prayer, fasting, alms-giving–Easter!<\/i><\/p>\n

NYC churches, as one example of a large urban center, seemingly have millions of people filtering through the churches on Ash Wednesday. Certainly, the Cathedral of Saint Patrick saw 40-50 thousand people today and Saint Agnes Church saw about 7 thousand people come for ashes. It’s tiresome to stand all day imposing ashes on gizilions of people repeating person-after-person the formula, “Remember that you are dust and dust you shall return.” <\/i>BUT it was good work for the Lord and for our sisters and brothers. On a personal note, I prayed my rosary and made my morning offering today for all the people upon whom I placed some ash as a token of the journey of conversion they’ve begun today by moving to the Last Supper, calvary and then unto empty tomb unto their salvation.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Pope’s homily today is another wonderful piece of practical theology moving us to the center of faith in Jesus Christ.<\/i><\/p>\n

Today, Ash\u00a0Wednesday, we begin the Lenten journey: a journey that extends over 40 days and\u00a0that leads us to the joy of the Lord’s Easter. We are not alone<\/b> in this\u00a0spiritual itinerary, because the Church accompanies and sustains us from the\u00a0start with the Word of God, which encloses a program of spiritual life and\u00a0penitential commitment, and with the grace of the sacraments.<\/p>\n

The words of the\u00a0Apostle Paul offer us a precise instruction: “Working together<\/b>, then, we\u00a0appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says: ‘In an\u00a0acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.’ Behold,\u00a0now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2\u00a0Corinthians 6:1-2). In fact, in the Christian vision of life every moment must\u00a0be called favorable and <\/b>every day must be called the day of salvation<\/b>. But the\u00a0liturgy of the Church refers these words in a very particular way to the time\u00a0of Lent. And that the 40 days of preparation for Easter be a favorable time and grace we can understand precisely in the call that the austere rite of the\u00a0imposition of ashes addresses to us and which is expressed, in the liturgy,\u00a0with two formulae: “Repent and believe in the Gospel,” and\u00a0“Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.”<\/p>\n

The\u00a0first call is to conversion, a word that must be taken in its extraordinary\u00a0seriousness, discovering the amazing novelty it contains. The call to\u00a0conversion, in fact, uncovers and denounces the easy superficiality that very\u00a0often characterizes our way of living. To be converted means to change\u00a0direction along the way of life — not for a slight adjustment, but<\/i><\/b> a true and\u00a0total change of direction. Conversion is to go against the current, where the\u00a0“current” is a superficial lifestyle<\/b>, inconsistent and illusory, which often draws us, controls us and makes us slaves of evil, or in any case\u00a0prisoners of moral mediocrity. With conversion, instead, one aims to the lofty\u00a0measure of Christian life; we are entrusted to the living and personal Gospel,\u00a0which is Christ Jesus. His person is the final goal<\/b> and the profound meaning of\u00a0conversion; he is the way which we are called to follow in life, allowing ourselves to be illumined by his light and sustained by his strength that moves\u00a0our steps. In this way conversion manifests its most splendid and fascinating\u00a0face: It is not a simple moral decision to rectify our conduct of life, but<\/i><\/b> it\u00a0is a decision of faith<\/b>, which involves us wholly in profound communion with the\u00a0living and concrete person of Jesus.<\/p>\n

\"Peter<\/a><\/p>\n

To be converted<\/i> and <\/i>to believe in the\u00a0Gospel<\/i> <\/i>are not two different things<\/i><\/b> or in some way closely related, but rather,\u00a0they express the same reality.<\/i> Conversion is the total “yes” of the\u00a0one who gives his own existence to the Gospel, responding freely to Christ, who\u00a0first offered himself to man as Way, Truth and Life, as the one who frees and\u00a0saves him. This is precisely the meaning of the first words with which,\u00a0according to the Evangelist Mark, Jesus began the preaching of the “Gospel\u00a0of God.” “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at\u00a0hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15).<\/p>\n

“Repent and\u00a0believe in the Gospel” is not only at the beginning of the Christian life,\u00a0but accompanies all its steps, [this call] remains, renewing itself, and\u00a0spreads, branching out in all its expressions. Every day is a favorable moment\u00a0of grace<\/b>, because each day invites us to give ourselves to Jesus, to have\u00a0confidence in him, to remain in him, to share his style of life, to learn from\u00a0him true love, to follow him in daily fulfilling of the will of the Father, the\u00a0only great law of life — every day, even when difficulties and toil, exhaustion and falls are not lacking, even when we are tempted to abandon the following of Christ and to shut ourselves in ourselves, in our egoism, without\u00a0realizing the need we have to open to the love of God in Christ, to live the\u00a0same logic of justice and love.<\/p>\n

\"B16<\/a><\/p>\n

In the recent Message for Lent<\/b><\/a>, I wished to\u00a0remind that “humility is required to accept that I need Another to free me\u00a0from ‘what is mine,’ to give me gratuitously ‘what is his.’ This happens\u00a0especially in the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist. Thanks to\u00a0Christ’s action, we may enter into the ‘greatest’ justice, which is that of\u00a0love (cf. Rm 13, 8-10), the justice that recognizes itself in every case more a\u00a0debtor than a creditor, because it has received more than could ever have been\u00a0expected” (L’Osservatore Romano<\/i>, Feb. 5, 2010, p. 8).<\/p>\n

The favorable moment\u00a0and grace of Lent shows us the very spiritual meaning also through the old\u00a0formula: “Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt\u00a0return,” which the priest pronounces when he places ashes on our head. We\u00a0are thus remitted to the beginning of human history, when the Lord said to Adam\u00a0after the original fault: “By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are\u00a0dirt, and to dirt you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).<\/p>\n

Here, the Word of God\u00a0reminds us of our frailty, including our death, which is the extreme expression\u00a0of our frailty. In face of the innate fear of the end, and even more so in the\u00a0context of a culture that in so many ways tends to censure the reality and the human experience of dying, the Lenten liturgy on one hand reminds us of death,\u00a0<\/b>inviting us to realism<\/b> and to wisdom but, on the other hand, it drives us above\u00a0all to accept and live the unexpected novelty that the <\/b>Christian faith\u00a0liberates us from the reality of death itself<\/b>.<\/p>\n

\"B16<\/a><\/p>\n

Man is dust and to dust he shall\u00a0return, but he is precious dust in God’s eyes, because God created man for\u00a0immortality. Thus the liturgical formula “Remember man that thou art dust\u00a0and to dust thou shalt return<\/i>” finds the fullness of its meaning in\u00a0reference to the new Adam, Christ. The Lord Jesus also wished to freely share\u00a0with every man the lot of frailty, in particular through his death on the\u00a0cross; but precisely this death, full of his love for the Father and for\u00a0humanity, has been the way for the glorious resurrection, through which Christ\u00a0has become the source of a grace given to those who believe in him and are made\u00a0participants of divine life itself. This life which will have no end is already\u00a0present in the earthly phase of our existence, but will be led to fulfillment\u00a0after the “resurrection of the flesh.” The\u00a0little\u00a0gesture of the\u00a0imposition of ashes<\/b> reveals to us the singular richness of its meaning: It is\u00a0an <\/b>invitation to live the time of Lent as a more conscious<\/b> and more intense\u00a0<\/b>immersion in the Paschal Mystery of Christ<\/b>, in his death and resurrection, through participation in the Eucharist and in the life of charity, which stems\u00a0from the Eucharist and in which it finds its fulfillment.<\/b> With the imposition\u00a0of ashes we renew our commitment to follow Jesus, to allow ourselves to be\u00a0transformed by his Paschal Mystery, to overcome evil and do good, to have the\u00a0“old man” in us die, the one linked to sin, and to have the \u201cnew man” be born, transformed by the grace of God.<\/p>\n

Dear friends! While we\u00a0hasten to undertake the austere Lenten journey, we want to invoke with\u00a0particular confidence the protection and help of the Virgin Mary. May she, the\u00a0first believer in Christ, be the one who accompanies us in these 40 days of\u00a0intense prayer and sincere penance, to be able to celebrate, purified and\u00a0completely renewed in mind and spirit, the great mystery of her Son’s Easter.<\/p>\n

Good\u00a0Lent to all!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last sentence of Pope Benedict’s Wednesday audience today gives us a clue as to the reason why we begin a religious season of conversion, a yearly season of purification, he says: “40 days of intense prayer and sincere penance, to be able to celebrate, purified and completely renewed in mind and spirit, the great … Continue reading Ash Wednesday 2010: Conversion goes against the current of mediocre morality<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[1953,1899,32081],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25340"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30073,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25340\/revisions\/30073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}