Lent: “Now is a very acceptable time”
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Trying to celebrate Easter without observing Lent can be like visiting a museum without knowing the value of any of the art or artifacts on display.
“You can’t appreciate anything because you don’t know what it is,” Father Jason Doke told students of St. Martin School during an all-school Mass on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. “It’s like if somebody’s speaking a foreign language to you, and you don’t understand.”
“But once you have a lesson about it, once you learn something about those paintings, those statues, those artifacts, you can begin to appreciate them meaningfully,” he said.
That’s exactly what Catholics are called to do during Lent.
“We turn back to Christ so we can fully or better appreciate what he did for us as Easter, at the resurrection, how he saved us,” said Fr. Doke.
Three important ways to do that are praying, fasting and giving alms.
These three activities are year-round hallmarks of any Christian but are given extra emphasis throughout Lent.
Fasting involves willfully giving up food or something else that’s good.
“Food is important,” Fr. Doke noted. “Food helps make us healthy. But when we learn to control our appetite for something that’s good, when we say ‘You know what? I’m going to deny myself something GOOD,’ it teaches us how also to deny ourselves of things that are BAD.”
Almsgiving involves giving sacrificially of oneself to people in need, out of a sense of charity.
Prayer, including private prayer in the silence of one’s home and heart, opens people up to a deeper relationship with God.
“These are ways that we begin to prepare for Easter, to celebrate Christ’s resurrection,” Fr. Doke stated. “And that’s important for us, because if we don’t prepare ourselves for it, we could totally miss it and it won’t be important to us.”
Catholics take up these practices year after year in Lent, with the intent of growing closer and closer to God.
The Scripture readings for the day give clear guidance.
In the reading from the Book of Joel, God’s prophet tells his Chosen People to “Rend your hearts, not your garments.”
Fr. Doke noted that to rend means to tear apart, and that when people in Biblical times were angry or very upset about something, they would tear their garments as a sign of mourning.
“And Jesus tells us, ‘Don’t give us a show,’” the priest explained. “He says, ‘It’s not about changing what people can see on the outside. It’s about changing what’s in your heart.’
“And that’s what we do during Lent,” said Fr. Doke. “We change our hearts. We grow closer and closer to Christ.”
He pointed out that receiving the Body of Christ in the Eucharist provides a glimpse of what’s significant about Easter, about Jesus freely giving up his life and then rising from the dead.
“And it’s through the Eucharist that he gives us the knowledge and the grace to recognize the things in our lives that we need to change to grow closer to him,” he said.
Fr. Doke blessed the small bowls of ashes that had been made from burning dried-up palms from past Palm Sundays.
“O God,” he prayed, “who are moved by acts of humility and respond with forgiveness to works of penance, lend your merciful ear to our prayers and in your kindness pour out the grace of your blessing on your servants who are marked with these ashes, that, as they follow the Lenten observances, they may be worthy to come with minds made pure to celebrate the Paschal Mystery of your Son.”
Everyone in church then came forward to have ashes traced in the shape of a cross on their forehead by Fr. Doke or one of the deacons who assisted him.
To each person, they said “Repent and believe in the Gospel” or “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”
The ashes are a symbol of each person’s inevitable death due to sin, as well as a heartfelt desire to do penance and turn away from sin.
