News Item: : Ash Wednesday 2017
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Wednesday 01 March 2017 - 10:08:10

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Remember, man, that thou art dust, and into dust thou shalt return (Gen 3).

Perhaps one of the classical mistakes that we can make as Catholics is to set about the penitential season of Lent as though everything depends upon us. We can sometimes tend to think that we can somehow earn, or even purchase, God's love by the fasts and penances that we undergo in this holy season. Maybe that is why we so often find the Lenten season so daunting; and why we struggle to keep to it joyfully.

To enter more fully into the Lenten season, it is surely important to recall that God's love and grace already precedes us, accompanies us and goes ahead of us along the way of life.

Christ first loves us.

That means that all our almsgivings, fasts, prayers and penances are really the response called forth in and by love.

The Lenten practices are not so much us trying to win His love, or to simply get His attention, by suffering stoically through gritted teeth. Rather, they are the very least that we can do for One Who loves us so much.

Before we ever existed, He thought of us for eternity. He first loves us and we even need His grace to help us to respond to His love with our loving sacrifices. As St. Paul taught in Ephesians 5:2: ''And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath delivered Himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odour of sweetness.''  

The study on the theme of the Heart of the Incarnate Word, which is found in paragraph CCC 478 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, can be very helpful to us in grasping this afresh at the start of Lent.

This reads: ''Jesus knew and loved us each and all during His life, His agony and His Passion, and gave Himself up for each one of us: 'The Son of God... loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:20).' He has loved us all with a human heart. For this reason the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation (John 19:34) is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that... love with which the Divine Redeemer continually loves the Eternal Father and all human beings without exception.''

St. Bonaventure's study of The Life of St. Francis has a marvellous section that can help us to better understand and practice the almsgiving, fasting, prayer and penances of this holy Lenten season:-

The poor man of Christ had only two mites (Mark 12:42), namely his body and his soul, which he could give away in generous charity. But out of love of Christ he offered them so continuously that he seemed to be constantly immolating his body through rigour of fasting, and his spirit through the ardour of his desire, sacrificing a holocaust in the outer courtyard and burning incense in the interior temple.

Quite simply, it was all for love. This deep love of Christ in the heart of St. Francis led him to undertake additional 40-day periods of penance at other times of the year, such as in preparation for the Feast of the Assumption, and in thanksgiving after it.

Today the Church calls us to enter deeply into conversion to Christ through the season and practices of Lent. This is an official day of Fasting and Abstinence.

The ashes that we will receive on our foreheads at Holy Mass today are a sacramental sign of this call and response to conversion. As such, they can act as a conduit of grace to those who are prepared, well disposed and firmly willing to receive such grace as God wishes to give us to keep a good Lent, to become closer to Christ and to make it to Heaven for a blessed eternity with Him.

When we consider the state of the Church and society, and our own past sins and ongoing struggles with sin and attachment to selfishness, we can see how much we need the penitential season of Lent. How wise and good is our Mother the Church to give us this season to bring us back to Jesus once more. If we keep in mind the foundational truth that Christ first loves us, then we shall not be discouraged by our weakness, nor become proud if we manage to fast and pray well. 

We pray that all our readers will be blessed with a good Lent.

St. Francis and St. Bonaventure - Pray for us!      


This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.1568 )