Dcn. Tom McClelland's Homily:
        Ash Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Lent, as we all know, is the season of personal penance.  It is our time of preparation for the upcoming celebration of Easter.  It is our Church's call for each of us to go through a spiritual house cleaning, a time of change, a time of reconciling ourselves with God.  We try, of course, to be close to God throughout the year, but being humans we don't always do as well as we know we might.  So, in her wisdom, our Church invites us now to a concentrated period of self-assessment, of contrition, of repentance, and particularly of interior conversion.

It is this interior conversion that is so important!  We must change our hearts to be more like Jesus — totally in love with God our Father and totally forgiving of those around us.  It's not about how many times we wear sackcloth or deny ourselves food, but it is about changing our attitude and our motives.  In our First Reading, the prophet Joel says, "Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God."  In the Second Reading, Saint Paul says, "Now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation."  And in Mark's gospel, he writes: "This is the time of fulfillment.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent, and believe in the gospel."  So the message of scripture is clear and consistent.  We must change our hearts, which is to say that we must undergo conversion.

To help us with our spiritual, interior conversion, it is good to do some physical acts of penance.  We are a physical people, who are used to seeing things and doing things.  But our spiritual and mental worlds need to coincide with the physical.  So fasting, almsgiving, and more prayers are important— these are prime acts of penance, because they help us get our bodies, minds, and spirits all working together.  In our Catholic Tradition, the physical sign of marking our foreheads with ashes at the beginning of Lent has become a primary outward sign of our interior penitential attitude and our desire to change to become more like Christ.  So let's explore for a minute what is symbolized in the ashes.  What should be going on in your mind after you receive the ashes here in a few minutes?

Ashes are created by fire, and fire destroys.  Think of a forest fire or a house fire.  These certainly destroy things that exist.  Here, the ashes we will use now were created by fire, by burning last year's palms.  But we know, too, that out of ashes comes new life.  After a forest fire, new plants and new trees begin to sprout.  The forest is not the same as it was before the fire.  It has undergone significant change.  People often rebuild a new home on the site of their previous, burned-out old home, and the new home is most likely better and safer than the old one.  Remember, "rend your heart."  This Lent, take some time to identify and to destroy some part of you that needs improvement.

Let the blackness of the ashes remind you of your need for sorrow and contrition.  Let the shape of the cross in the ashes on your forehead remind you that Jesus died for you.  Let the graininess and dirt of the ashes remind you that you are dust and have a great need for humility.  But most of all, let these ashes remind you that at the end of Lent there is the promise of new life — that something far better awaits us because Jesus died and arose for us.  The call is for us to truly get out of our old ways, leave the sinful baggage behind, and to become a new creation through interior change this Lent.

We have to die to ourselves in order to become alive in God.  We have to die to sin in order to be recreated in God's grace.  We have to be willing to change, that we may more fully respond to the invitation of a loving God.

Ashes remind us of all this.  May God help us make the interior conversion that we sinners need so deeply.