Ash Wednesday: Lenten Reflection by Fr. Xavier
We tend to think of the season of Lent as a time when we want to get more serious about changing our lives. Of course, that is true. But I suggest that it is helpful if we see it as a time God and the Church gives us to come more deeply into our union with Christ in His transforming action. The mystery of transformation at work in Jesus is given to be at work in us! We hear something of this in the introduction to the 1981 edition of the Lectionary:
The purpose of the homily at Mass is that the spoken word of God and the Liturgy of the Eucharist may together become ‘a proclamation of God’s wonderful works in the history of salvation, the mystery of Christ.’
“The mystery of Christ” – Blessed Columba Marmion draws out our connection to this truth in these words: “In His mysteries, Christ makes but one with us.” There is no truth upon which St. Paul insisted more strongly than upon this: “We make one with Christ in the divine thought,” (Marmion, Christ in His Mysteries). The Eternal Father saw us with His Son in each of the mysteries lived by Christ, and because Christ accomplished them as Chief of the Church. I might even say that, on account of this, the mysteries of Christ Jesus are more our mysteries than they are His.”
In ‘the sacred mysteries,’ especially the Holy Eucharist, we receive Christ come into our lives to help us live day by day. Christ Jesus does not simply say to us, “You’ve got to love!” He says, “Will you come into my life, my love, and love along with me? Will you allow the mystery of my loving to become a part of you?”
Abbot Gregory at today’s Ash Wednesday Mass where seminarians joined the monastic community.
This union with Christ is the seed of glory planted in us at our baptism! It is the powerful potency at work in us through the Holy Eucharist, the great mystery of transformation at work in Jesus given to be ours! Lent is the select season of the year we are given to emphasize the cultivation of this seed of glory – the Paschal or Resurrection Mystery within us – within us as individuals, within us as communities.
A primary effect of this reality is something Jesus had to often tell his disciples: “Do not be afraid!” Do not be afraid of the selfishness, the sins and faults which you daily experience within. Your dignity and worth do not lie in these episodes of daily life, too frequent though they may be! You must say to them: “You do not really belong to me!” Oh yes, I recognize you. I admit you have often been traveling along with me. But you are not really me. I am so much more than the angers and lusts and doubts and fears that go through my mind and feelings. These are not who I am!
Do not be afraid of the work change involves. Rather, as we come to the sacred season of Lent, we ask Christ for courage. We ask to be drawn into Christ’s own life and to learn what he meant when he told us: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
As to ‘what to do for Lent,’ the advice which Blessed Pope Paul VI gave the Church in his Apostolic Constitution, Paenitemini, on Fast and Abstinence, is of first consideration:
The Church…invites everyone to accompany the inner conversion of the spirit with the voluntary exercise of external acts of penitence: It insists first of all that the virtue of penitence be exercised in persevering faithfulness to the duties of one’s state in life, in the acceptance of the difficulties arising from one’s work and from human coexistence, in a patient bearing of the trials of earthly life and of the utter insecurity which pervades it.
Fr. Xavier, OSB is the Dean of Spiritual Formation and a professor at Conception Seminary College. A monk of Conception Abbey for 58 years, Fr. Xavier came to Conception as a high school student and professed vows in 1958.
