Reflection for Ash Wednesday

By Mary Schneiders, OP

Joel 2:12-18
2 Cor. 5:20-6:2
Mt 6:1-6, 16-18

Today's readings make it abundantly clear that Lent is a time of repentance, conversion, and reconciliation. - Fasting and doing penance are put forth as a means to facilitate our repentance and conversion.
- What isn't at all clear from the readings, however, is just what it is we are supposed to repent of, convert from, or be reconciled to or with; or just what it is we are to fast from, or for which we are to do penance.
- One is tempted to respond immediately that the answer to all of the above questions is - sin. We are to repent of and convert from our sins; we are to do penance for our sins.

If, however, we are to repent, convert and do penance for sin, we need to know what those sins are from which we are to turn. And we need to consider how fasting and doing penance are really related to repentance and conversion.
- Doing penance for the sake of doing penance is meaningless and without value. Nothing in the scriptures or in Jesus' own life provides a basis for engaging in arbitrarily chosen or gratuitous penances. Much less is there any basis for believing that God derives some kind of perverse pleasure from our self-imposed suffering.
- Penance such as fasting, for example, makes sense only as a means to an end - namely, to bring about a change of heart, to help us make the changes necessary to put us in right relationship with God, self and others.
- Thus, in order to know what kind of penance we should engage in, or what we need to fast from, we need to know what needs to change within ourselves to make us more loving, just persons.

All of the prophets, however, including Jesus, make it clear that genuine personal conversion is never just about private piety or morality.
- Our personal conversion must always be understood within the context of our covenant relationship with God. And that means that our personal holiness - our being in right relationship with God - can never be separated from being in right relationship with ourselves and our neighbor.

The prophet Joel in the first reading, like all the prophets, is concerned with the people's infidelity to the covenant relationship. But it's interesting to note that the prophet never addresses this relationship in terms of. the individual's personal relationship with God. He clearly doesn't understand the covenant as a matter of personal or private morality or piety.
- In the prophets' understanding, an intrinsic and constitutive dimension of the covenant relationship with God was one's relationship with others both within and outside one's immediate family, community or neighborhood.
- To be in right relationship with God, one must be in right relationship with one's neighbor which meant treating the neighbor, especially the neediest, with respect, compassion and justice.

And today, our shrinking globe and heightened awareness of the injustices and suffering around the world require that we extend our concern to our more distant neighbors, and address the terrible evil and destructiveness of systemic and institutionalized sin.
- It isn't enough that we extend our help and compassion to our near neighbors. Our concern, compassion and efforts on behalf of justice have to extend beyond those who are suffering and in need in our own families, communities or country.
- They have to extend to the millions of people, especially children, in developing nations around the world who are the victims of dehumanizing poverty and starvation; to those whose lives have been devastated by war and its attendant atrocities; to those subjected to domestic violence, and those suffering under political oppression and the violation of their human rights.

The unanimous judgment of the prophets is that we cannot be in right relationship with God - no matter how personally pious or moral we are - and at the same time be indifferent to the injustice, violence and oppression that binds and imprisons our sisters and brothers throughout the world.

And we find Jesus very much in line with the prophets of Judaism. Jesus is preaching God's reign and it is a reign of peace, justice and love. For Jesus, as for the prophets, it is primarily the violation of our relationships with our neighbors, our refusal to love others and treat them justly, that constitutes our sin.
- Thus, when Jesus talks about how we are to do penance in today's gospel, he is concerned with the depth and genuineness of our conversion of heart. He condemns and rejects the sort of ostentatiousness that indicates a greater concern with impressing others with our holiness than with acquiring a new heart, a converted heart more in accord with the covenant and with gospel values.

What change of heart are we being called to this lent? What are the sins against the covenant that God is calling us to repent of, be converted from? What is it that we need to fast from in our lives?
- Whereas fasting from food can be meaningful and beneficial if it sensitizes us to the hunger that is the daily reality of so many of our sisters and brothers around the world, there might be certain other things that, as women, we need to fast from far more than from food. What might we be like at the end of lent if we were to fast from:
- a passivity rooted in lack of self confidence or poor self-image that keeps us from speaking and/or acting on behalf of the poor and oppressed;
- from fear and self-doubt that paralyzes us, preventing action on behalf of the poor, abused and abandoned;
- from too much reliance on the approval of others (especially men) that often keeps us silent in the face of injustice, or too ready to give in or compromise on issues of justice so as to keep the "others" happy;
- from an addiction to "being nice" that causes us to waffle on issues of truth, or to avoid anger even when justified - anger that might move us to take action?

If Jesus were addressing the question of the penance women should do as an expression of a "changed heart", it would might look considerably different from the kinds of things mentioned in today's gospel - practices and attitudes more prevalent among men than women in societies where men held all or most public positions, and all or most political power. Indeed, he would probably be exhorting women in quite the opposite direction.
- In all likelihood, Jesus would be encouraging women
- to be more public, to be more visible, more assertive, more vocal;
- to refuse to be complicit in their own oppression, and in so doing, to take a stand against all oppression;
- to refuse to continue in the role of victim; and thus to empower others who are victimized to stand up against injustice;
- to have the courage to speak the truth loudly and clearly, and insist on being acknowledged and heard;
- to make their voices heard on all issues of justice in all the various arenas of society - political, business, professional and religious.

Lent calls both men and women to repentance, conversion and penance but the self-same call to covenant fidelity often requires very different responses from women than from men. One's repentance, conversion, fasting and penance must be in recognition of and in response to the specific ways in which one is unfaithful to the covenant and the reign of God as proclaimed by Jesus.

The call of Ash Wednesday is "Repent and believe the Good News." How will we respond to that call, how will we change our hearts so that at the end of these 40 days, the promise of hope and new life proclaimed by Jesus' resurrection will have become more of a reality both in our own lives and in our world?