Ash Wednesday

“… return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning” Joel: 2, 12

We’re busy people.

We have all kinds of time commitments. We find ourselves rushing from this thing I must do to the next thing I have to do.

We have demanding jobs. We have kids that must be taken care of. We have social promises to keep, family obligations to meet, “and miles to go before we sleep,” as the saying goes.

The problem, of course, is that amid all this hurrying and worrying about many things, we often forget about our own selves: our health, our rest, our need for quiet, our want for slowing down and listening to our inner self.

Most of us, I think, would admit that we long sometimes for the “sounds of silence,” for some time to just be alone with ourselves and our God.

That’s what the season of Lent is about.

It’s about allowing ourselves the time to stop all the rushing and the worrying about many things and spending some time alone with God.

It’s about reviewing where our lives are going.

It’s about looking inside ourselves and seeing where we are with the really important things in life.

It’s about taking time out on the field of life, if you will, and going into a huddle with just you and your Lord.

It’s also a time for repentance – a special time set aside by the Church to allow us to take a hard look at the direction we are taking in life and bringing it to the Lord.
But perhaps most of all, Lent is a time for reflection and a re-commitment to the solid values that we know should be ruling our lives: justice and mercy and love.
For all these reasons, then, Lent is a time designated to prepare our hearts and souls to be open to a renewed life in the Spirit, a life that we know will transform us into the full, whole, and true human beings we most want to be.

The prophet Joel said it so well in the first reading we heard today: “return to me with your whole heart, with fasting and weeping, and mourning.”

Return.

Return to that deepest part of yourself that longs for union with God.

Return to the best of you, the self that has maybe wandered off into a place that has taken you away from your true home in the Lord.

Return to the Lord with your whole heart.

Make this Lent the most special one of your whole life.

Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.