Homily for Wednesday, 5 March 2014‒ Ash Wednesday

Readings of the day: Joel 2:12-18; Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 14, 17; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

How can Lent be experienced as a season of joy? Does anyone among us experience Lent as joyful? How so?

For many of us, to think of Lent as a season of joy may be difficult. Lent is a season that focuses on our being and eventual return “to dust”; a season we begin today by wearing ashes on our foreheads; a season of penance; a season to remember our sin against God and neighbour and to ask God and one another for forgiveness.

And yet, as I would ask this challenging question of teenagers I prepared for confirmation when I was in seminary in Toronto, I ask all of us the same question: How can Lent be a season of joy?

To be joyful is not the same as being happy all the time. Sin and our need to repent should not make us happy, but even amid this season of penance there is cause for joy.

Our readings today invite us to be joyful. We acknowledge our sin; we promise to repent; to turn away from sin and toward God. We wear ashes, not to “look gloomy” or to be seen by others as repentant, as Jesus asks us not to do in our Gospel reading today, but because today we begin a celebration of joy. We celebrate with joy because we trust that God hears the prayers of the repentant. We trust in a forgiving; loving; kind and “merciful” God; the God whom the prophet Joel says “took pity on his people”; the God who sent his only Son that we might be saved by his death and resurrection; the God who invites us to “return to [him] with [our] whole heart”; to “repent and believe in the Gospel.” 

“Behold, now is a very acceptable time,” St. Paul says. “Behold, now is the day of salvation.” Now, as we begin this season of Lent, we are invited to celebrate our “day of salvation”; our Lent; our season of joy.