Ash Wednesday, which inaugurates the penitential season of Lent, will be on February 14, 2024. For the eleventh year, I will be offering a daily reflection on the psalm verses from the lectionary, accompanied by music, imagery, and a prayer as well as a link to the readings. For readers who are newer to the reflections, a word about why I have chosen to focus on the psalms. There are many reasons they make sense — they are accessible and user-friendly for busy people, they are powerful and beautiful, they help us think about our relationship to God as people of faith. But ultimately I chose them for their connection to prayer, in a season in which many of us try to increase or intensify our spiritual practices. Thomas Merton called them “the perfect form of prayer” for the layperson — but I wouldn’t restrict it to laypeople! The Psalms are unique in the way that they both summon us to pray and give us the words when we need them. And one other thing to note: the Hebrew name of the Psalms is Tehillim, or Praises. But numerically there are more petitions and laments than praises among the 150. But I believe that we praise God simply by acknowledging his existence and hanging on to our faith in his love even when the wicked prosper and the darkness bruises and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune fly. Any form of engagement in this sense constitutes praise, because in speaking to God, we are acknowledging that ultimately, he holds the whole world in his hands.
Now, for some housekeeping:
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Reflections will begin on Wednesday, February 14 and go through Holy Saturday, March 30. There will be no reflection offered on Sundays.
As you prepare to make the “penitential shift” and consider what your Lenten practices will be, I will leave you with this, from 17th-century poet Robert Herrick:
To Keep a True Lent
Is this a fast, to keep
The larder lean?
And clean
From fat of veals and sheep ?
Is it to quit the dish
Of flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with fish ?
Is it to fast an hour,
Or ragg’d to go,
Or show
A downcast look and sour ?
No ; ‘tis a fast to dole
Thy sheaf of wheat,
And meat,
Unto the hungry soul.
It is to fast from strife,
From old debate
And hate ;
To circumcise thy life.
To show a heart grief-rent ;
To starve thy sin,
Not bin ;
And that’s to keep thy Lent.
