Penitential Thoughts on Ash Wednesday

It is Ash Wednesday, the start of the season of Lent, and as far as I'm concerned, it couldn't have come a moment too soon.

Why?

It gives me just that much more reason to intensify my personal prayer for conversion of heart. With everything going on in our society, I figure some of it is my responsibility, my fault, my own grievous fault.

Seriously.

I may be a Constitutional Conservative, politically, but I am first and foremost a Christian. While I believe in limited, divided, inefficient governance, I also understand that each of us is responsible within the context of our lives to personally consider ourselves the keeper of our brothers and sisters. Not only are we personally responsible for alleviating the misery of the afflicted in our midst, we are corporately responsible to combine our efforts.

But as Church, not as government. I do not have the moral right to abrogate your free will to refuse to do good. I cannot morally force you to participate in good works by supporting legislation to strip you of your personal property (money) so that government can do the good works.

Yet you cannot listen to President Obama's Fat Tuesday speech before Congress (it wasn't a State of the Union talk), or read the details of the Porkulus legislation, or listen to federal bureaucrats talk of rescuing banks and mortgages and automakers, or hear of the earmarks in the new federal spending bill (Son of Porkulus), without realizing that both constitutional conservative AND Christian principles are no longer being followed.

And some of this is my fault. I and others like me have done a poor job in making the case for private charity over public works, most likely because we have left so much potential good undone. We have been too much of the world, like our secular neighbors, and desired material comforts for ourselves ahead of allocating a percentage of resources for outreach. We have given false witness of our Christian values even as we proclaimed our conservative values.

What we did, in essence, was come across as selfish at the least, hypocrites at the worst.

Is it too late to change? No. Even when the reluctant Jonah finally reached wicked Ninevah to preach God's message of "repent or face doom in 40 days", the people of Ninevah recognized something important in Jonah's message. Even the King was affected, ordering a period of lamentation and contritition, a 40-day period of wearing sackcloth and ashes. Even the livestock wore sackcloth and ashes.

And God spared Ninevah (though Jonah - no big fan of Ninevites - was not pleased about it). This incident became a singular example of the power of repentance.

We are the Jonahs of today's world, the reluctant messengers of a divine message of "change your ways or face the consequences." Will we deliver that message? Will we ourselves live that message?

That's what I'm thinking about on this most Holy Ash Wednesday as I deprive myself of some of the food I ordinarily eat (fasting) and of meat (abstinence). These are symbolic things, meant to get me in a frame of mind suitable for God's molding. That molding, however, will be more extensive than merely a change in dietary habits. It means a change of thought stemming from a change of heart. It means refraining from actions that harm others; it means taking up new actions that benefit those who are suffering.

My deprivation this year goes one step further than before. In Tulsa I could get my ashes in the morning as a physical reminder to me of what this day symbolizes. Now I live in an area where there are fewer priests and parishes, and I must strive a bit harder to live my faith. Which means that the ashes will come tonight.

Still, I am happy that in spirit I feel the grimy weight of those ashes on my forehead already. I want to have a good Lent that leads to a glorious Easter.

May you have a good Lent as well.