Ash Wednesday

For many Christian traditions, today is Ash Wednesday, the official beginning of the season of Lent. It is the beginning of a long and solemn meditation wherein the faithful practice abstinence, fasting, and repentance - a kind of modern day lay asceticism designed to refocus everyone's attention to the Lord. As Job says in 42:3-6

"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. The other eye wandereth of its own accord. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

One need not 'abhor oneself' to rightly partake in the fast. One simply must be cognizant of one's downfalls in religious devotion, something to every single person.

The Lenten tradition is to give up something, usually a sort of luxury. But I wonder, what is the good of excising a tumor or malignant growth from your body, but not treating and covering the wound? Will it not just get infected with another kind of filth? Similarly, if we give something up for Lent, but don't replace it with some kind of devotional practice, what really is the point? You'd be no better off than had you not given anything up at all! If your right hand is your downfall and you cut it off, isn't it all for naught if you should partake in your downfall with your left?

This year, I've given up some social networking sites for Lent. I find myself sitting at the screen for hours, blank faced and jaw agape. It seems as both eyes have wandered not only from God, but from those worldly things that are good, like school and my studies. Giving up these sites is only the first step in the Lenten process: it's not an end-all-be-all. The second step is a continual one, one in which the action is consistently taken and retaken. It requires vigilance, reverence and humility, and as concomitant to the latter, patience. It takes determination and patience to pray, as well as to study. Herein lies the true asceticism of Lent - not in the negative rescinding of worldly desires, but in taking up one's cross and walking for 40 days. This is the trial and I hope to come out spiritually alive. Most people don't.

Pray for me.

Dominus Vobiscum