Sarah Wells

Contributor

Ash Wednesday is coming up on Feb. 18 and there is much to be gleaned from our Church’s tradition on the origins of the ashes and the gift of fasting. It is in the beginning, in the garden of Eden, where we find the first example of God’s commandment to fast. In the fourth century, St. Basil the Great wrote in his First Homily on Fasting that “Fasting is as old as mankind itself …  If Eve had fasted from the tree, we would not have to keep this fast now,” referring to the Lenten fast.

After Genesis, we find myriad instances of fasting, accompanied by the donning of sackcloth and ashes. Having been humbled by God, Job admits, “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:6) The prophet Daniel interceded for the people of Israel saying, “I turned to the Lord God, to seek help, in prayer and petition, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.” (Daniel 9:3) In preparation for battle, the Israelites “fasted and wore sackcloth; they sprinkled ashes on their heads and tore their garments.” (1 Mac 3:47) Hearing the news that a massacre of the Jews would be carried out by the king, “Queen Esther, seized with mortal anguish, fled to the Lord for refuge. Taking off her splendid garments, she put on garments of distress and mourning. In place of her precious ointments, she covered her head with dung and ashes. She afflicted her body severely and in place of her festive adornments, her tangled hair covered her” (Esther 4:12-13).

In these instances, we see individuals as well as communities fasting, all marked by ashes. We emulate our forebears in faith with the ashes we receive on Ash Wednesday, which signify the beginning of a public, communal fast by the whole Church. Ashes are a sign of petition for a specific cause and sign of conviction to the world.

Around the eighth century, it was only public sinners and the dying who received ashes. To the dying, a priest would say, “Remember that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.” He sprinkled the person with holy water and asked, “Art thou content with sackcloth and ashes in testimony of thy penance before the Lord in the day of judgment?” To which the person replied, “I am content.”

At the start of the eleventh century, an Anglo-Saxon priest named Aelfric preached, “We read in the books both in the Old Law and in the New that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.”

In 1091, Pope Urban II established the universal practice of distributing ashes on the foreheads of the faithful at the beginning of Lent.

Why fast? Why give alms? Why pray? We do these things in hopes of emptying ourselves, to become poor in spirit, to depend upon God alone. To acquire sanctity in this world, one must fight and suffer for it. Our fasts bring this truth to the front of our minds.

St. Basil continues, “Remember the saints of old, ‘Of whom the world was not worthy, who went around in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, persecuted, mistreated.’ Remember their mode of life, if indeed you are seeking after the same inheritance as them.”

These practices restore dignity to our souls through the acquisition of self-control, leading to self-mastery. It is only through submission to God that man becomes master of himself, just as Adam submitted to God and received dominion over all of Eden. We still retain that commandment of dominion, but now we must overcome our inclination to sin in order to live it out.

Deacon James Keating, of the St. Paul Center, captures the nature of sin as he writes, “Sin pathologically clings only to the endless boredom of repetitive daily features of the interior life: constant rehearsal of our sinfulness, continued recollection of personal inadequacies, denigrating thoughts about the imperfections of neighbors, resentment toward the mundane horarium of each day, bathing in negative thoughts and moods, existing in cynicism and all manners of interior desires bent on disorder, greed, lust, envy, pride, sloth, anger, and gluttony. All of these desires weigh us down from within” (from his article The Healing Power of the Eucharist).

To fast is to be ripped out of this cycle. That is why we fast on each Friday of the year, not just during Lent (Code of Canon Law 1250-1253). Through deliberate hunger, the surrender of our income to causes outside of ourselves, and the quieting of our own thoughts to be present to God in prayer, we mature in our faith. We move from spiritual immaturity, which keeps us in a cycle of grasping for instant gratification, to spiritual maturity, a place of inner freedom where the soul lives out the truth that its deepest need is God. Through these practices of self-emptying, man regains his original dignity and set on the path toward God.

Sarah Wells is pastoral associate at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Covington. This article was first published in the parish’s Gargoyle Gazette and has been reprinted with permission.

Bella Bailey

Multimedia Correspondent

The Gospel reading for the Mass of Consecrated Life, celebrated by Bishop John Iffert at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Covington, Feb. 7, explored the “economics of salvation,” said Bishop Iffert. And the ongoing tensions between the micro and macro ramifications of the presentation of the Christ child in the temple.

“On a macro level…we see Mary and Joseph continuing in the tradition of the people of Israel,” said Bishop Iffert. Where, in the tradition of Passover, where an “unblemished and spotless lamb” is sacrificed so that the angel of death would “passover” those in danger during the Biblical plagues. In the same way, Mary and Joseph present Jesus in the temple, “to consecrate him, redeeming him from this curse of death, redeeming the eldest child, and so redeeming all of Israel from the curse that our own sin had brought upon us,” said Bishop Iffert.

“They take the sacrifice, offered for the poor, and they offer it for Jesus … and so he enters into this great macro drama of the salvation and redemption of humankind,” he said, “joined to our struggle and able to be the one who offers, once and for all, the acceptable sacrifice on the cross and frees all of humanity.”

This, Bishop Iffert says, is the “cosmic drama,” on a macro level, that is seen in the Gospel reading. The micro drama is seen in the relationships of the Gospel passage.

“Here he was, being brought as a babe to the city of Jerusalem, and this great cosmic drama is coming to a head in his person and being, and almost nobody notices,” said Bishop Iffert. “He’s just another kid being brought to the temple.”

In the Gospel, it is only Simeon and Anna who are able to see the “cosmic” significance of the presentation of the Lord. Even Mary and Joseph, despite them having received angelic news of “the great salvific action of God in this Child … they can still be surprised,” said Bishop Iffert.

This micro and macro tension, “the drama of God’s salvific work for his people, and the micro side of the economy of salvation, the relational side, the quiet side, the often unseen side,” is seen in the lives of consecrated men and women, said Bishop Iffert.

“I think this is the tremendous gift that we see in the lives of those who are consecrated. To help us recollect that in every moment of ordinariness, even pain, every moment when we feel forgotten, every moment when we feel alone, every moment when we feel we’re struggling against all odds, that divine drama is being played out.”

“When our lives feel ordinary,” he said, “your vocation, brothers and sisters, your vocation gives the great witness to that truth.”

Laura Keener

Editor

During a Holy Hour for Peace, Feb. 8, at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Covington, Bishop John Iffert offered a reflection on what true peace means for Christians and for the world today. He began by reminding those gathered that peace is God’s desire for every person. When Jesus appeared to his disciples after the resurrection, his first words were, “Peace be with you.”

Bishop Iffert said that the peace Christ offers is different from the peace the world promises. The world often views peace as the result of power or domination, he said, but such peace is “no peace at all.” Instead, true peace comes from becoming part of the Body of Christ and learning to set ourselves aside so that Christ may grow within us.

The Holy Hour was a part of a national prayer effort in response to increased violence within the United States and in the world. Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Jan. 28, invited all bishops and priests in the United States to offer a Holy Hour for peace, “for reconciliation where there is division, for justice where there are violations of fundamental rights and for consolation for all who feel overwhelmed by fear or loss.”

At the Holy Hour in Covington, Bishop Iffert encouraged the congregation to pray not only for peace but also for the return of Christ, who will gather all people into His kingdom.

“The only way we can have peace is by sharing the body of Christ, being drawn into his body and by the gift of his Spirit, to take the Father’s Will as our will in Christ; to put ourselves aside, to decrease so that he can increase; to become small, so that he can become all. This is the only way, we pray, that peace will move in our world. It’s the same thing as saying we pray for Jesus to return,” said Bishop Iffert. “We pray for Jesus to come gain. To draw us to himself and to gather us into his kingdom”

Until then, he said, Christians must work to live as brothers and sisters and make their communities signs of God’s kingdom on earth.

“We pray in the meantime that our efforts to be peaceful with one another, to live as real brothers and sisters to one another and to our neighbors, that these efforts will be a real sign of the Kingdom of God that can lead to the development of people; the gift of a real human, joyful, life shared together,” he said.

As part of the Holy Hour, Bishop Iffert read from “Sollicitudo Rei Socialis,” an encyclical written by Pope St. John Paul II in 1987. The document reflects on the development of people and the barriers that keep many in poverty and hardship despite global efforts to improve economic conditions. It also explains that peace and human development are deeply connected with the Church’s mission and with the common good.

The encyclical teaches that even though no earthly achievement can be confused with the Kingdom of God, Christians must still care about people’s real needs in society. Knowing that the poor will always be among us is not an excuse to ignore suffering or injustice.

“Even though we know that economic growth, that political freedoms, are not themselves the goal of the Christian life or the Kingdom of God, there is no excuse that can be found in the Christian gospel for ignoring the needs of others, what they need to grow and develop and be educated and share these blessings with their children. There’s no excuse in the Gospel for ignoring that,” said Bishop Iffert.

Instead, every effort to improve human life — however small or imperfect — can be used by God for good. “However imperfect and temporary, all the things that can and ought to be done through the combined efforts of everyone and through Divine Grace at any given moment in history in order to make people’s lives more human,” he said. “Nothing will be lost.”

Bishop Iffert emphasized that the Eucharist shows most clearly how God uses human work for his purposes. In the Mass, the simple gifts of bread and wine, “the work of human hands,” are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ through the Holy Spirit. In this way, God uses ordinary things to reveal his kingdom and unite his people with himself and with one another.

This same pattern, the bishop said, applies to efforts for peace.

Just as God transforms bread and wine, he can transform our actions — our advocacy, our service and our care for the poor — into something greater than we could achieve alone, he said. Because of this, Christians should never give up working for human dignity, fighting injustice or resisting violence, even when progress seems slow or discouraging.

“We are not to be discouraged when the forces of the world work against human dignity,” said Bishop Iffert. “We are to see and we are to continue to work for the building up of that dignity precisely because we know that God will take the work of our hands, he will bless them. He will break them. He will offer praise over them. He will unite those efforts to the power of his Spirit and our shared life together in God will be plenty for all the world.”

Bishop Iffert concluded by reminding those gathered that every act of love and every effort for peace will bear fruit when united with Christ. “We never give up praying for peace,” he said, because God will use the work of our hands to bless the world.