March 2/Ash Wednesday
Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;
Rend your hearts, and not your garments, and return to the LORD your God. ~ Joel 2.13
A teacher friend recently observed that this school year — with on-again, off-again mask-wearing, with remote and in-person learning locked in a hateful dance, with unpredictable COVID outbreaks disrupting classroom rhythms — has been much harder than the year before, when things were totally shut down. In many ways, we are still far from getting back to a world that works as it is supposed to, and as the challenging, uncertain days drag on, we seem to be losing sight of basic civility and decency. In the past several months, I have seen many people say and do things I never would have expected — angry cursing on airplanes, meltdowns in grocery stores, scapegoating and demonizing of others. It is time for a reset: cue Ash Wednesday, when we are called to repentance. The word is fraught, isn’t it, old-fashioned, perhaps not even meaningful to some of us. But hitting the reset button is something most of us can identify with: it’s what we do with an iPhone that isn’t responding, or a computer that is acting up. We turn it off, unplug it, and try again. So must we do with our spiritual lives. To repent means to reboot, to turn back towards God “with your whole heart,” as the prophet Joel encourages us in today’s first reading. Every day, one way or another, we distance ourselves from God, turn our backs on him to follow our own desires and (literal!) devices. But over the next forty days, we are invited to turn around, to orient our lives towards practices of prayer, self-denial, and intentional quiet that will allow us to hear the only voice that matters. Reset or repent, what God asks of us these forty days is to turn back to him.
Gracious, merciful God, In this season of penitence, grant me the grace to turn around so that I may behold you. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030222.cfm
To hear the Cantores Chamber Choir sing Thomas Causton’s “Turn Thou Us, O Good Lord,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvqHihSr4hA
