Ash Wednesday

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The religious house I lived in while I was in seminary didn't celebrate birthdays. Instead, the community observed a resident's Name Day. For example, if your name was "Hugh" it's likely that you were named (at least in theory) after St. Hugh of Lincoln whose feast day in the church calendar is November 16th. So November 16th would be your Name Day and for that day you could request your favorite meal at dinner. There would be wine with lunch, special desserts would be served and other such pleasurable things would happen in your honor. A really nice idea.

The prophet Joel doesn't have a feast day on the church calendar so there was no obvious slot for my Name Day. However, the community didn't want me to miss out on all the fun so they decided that my annual celebration would take place on the one day of the church year when a significant portion of this doom-and-gloom Old Testament prophet's book is read at Mass: Ash Wednesday. This is a of day fasting and abstinence -- no meat at all, limited meals, no dessert, no wine with lunch but instead a whole variety of symbols to remind us of sin, death and the constant need for conversion.

I didn't take this very well. My first two years there I'd passive-aggressively sneak down into the kitchen late at night after everyone was asleep and binge on every cake, cookie and piece of meat I could find. This hidden, stolen indulgence made me feel very guilty and oddly powerful at the same time.

However, leading up to my third Ash Wednesday there I heard a homily in which the preacher reflected on the Anglo-Saxon root of the word "Lent," a word which means "spring." This was a homily about how good and life-giving the intentional acts of penance, charity and mortification we're invited to do during Lent actually are. He reflected on how adjusting our actions so they're more simple, loving and pure (areas of behavior that Jesus touches on in the Gospel reading for today) isn't meant as a dark punishment for being bad. Rather, these disciplines are meant to open us up to a profound experience of joy by diverting attention away from our appetites and compulsions and toward the real delights that we're often not open to because we're so busy thinking that we're enjoying everything else. These Lenten actions, begun on Ash Wednesday, remind us what true enjoyment really is. This season isn't one of death, but of life; not of winter but of spring.

That year on Ash Wednesday, without even realizing it until the next morning, I didn't secretly binge on chocolate mousse and beef skewers in the dark, lonely kitchen late at night. I didn't really feel the impulse to. Maybe I'd grown up a little over those two years or the insights of that preacher turned my attention more positively to the penances that I was planning to undertake for the season. And to this day, if Lent feels difficult or I haven't organized my spiritual practices very well or, even if organized, when I fail in them (as I always seem to do), I try to focus on the new life they're meant to make room for and not the "givings-up" I might cynically think they impose.

That in mind, it makes complete sense on this first day of a new season to wish everyone a "Happy Lent." So, a Happy Lent to all!

Dr. Joel Warden

Catholic Scholar in Residence

St. Francis College