February 26/Ash Wednesday
For I acknowledge my offense, and my sin is before me always:
Against you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight.” ~ Ps 51.5-6
Ever since that fateful evening in the garden of Eden when Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent, we humans have shown ourselves incredibly adept at pointing the finger at others instead of ourselves. “My boss didn’t tell me the deadline.” “The professor wasn’t clear about the paper topic.” “My spouse is in charge of paying the bills.” Or we rationalize: traffic made us late, we’re not good at visiting people in the hospital, we’re too busy to help out with the program at church. Our stance boils down to this: “Not I, not I, not I!” In her masterwork Middlemarch, the Victorian novelist George Eliot deftly depicted our failure to acknowledge our own offenses when she described the supremely self-concerned Rosamond Vincy as “calmly correct, in the conviction that she was not the person to misbehave, no matter what others might do.” As Middlemarch fans know, Rosamond came to a better place — and so, too, must we. Throughout the long forty days ahead, we can — we must — move from rationalization to repentance. Whether we call it transgression, offense, sin, or evil (and the psalmist today uses a plethora of words for wrongdoing), we must look squarely in the mirror, and say with the great 19th-century British theologian, Cardinal Newman, “O my God, what a great and awful difference is there between what I am and what I ought to be.” Let us begin this season of penitence by recognizing the wideness of that gap and owning up to what we have thought, said, and done that has hurt God, our neighbors, and ourselves. Acknowledging our faults to God humbly and with remorse is the necessary starting point on the road to Easter joy.
Lord Jesus Christ, Make me accountable to myself and to you for all of my weaknesses, errors, and offenses, and in your abiding mercy forgive me. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/022620.cfm
