(Ash Wednesday 2021: This homily was given on February 17, 2021 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Joel 2:12-18; Psalm 51; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2; Matthew 6:1-18.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Ash Wednesday 2021]
For several
years when I was pastor, I would offer a “theme word” on Ash Wednesday—a theme
word to guide people on their journey through the season of Lent. I’ll do that again this year. The theme word that
the Lord put on my heart for Lent 2021 is the word “permanent”.
I think
for many Catholics (and I include myself here) Lent tends to be an isolated 40
days. Even if we do actually follow
through on our Lenten commitments to prayer and self-denial for the entire 40
days (which is a big “if” to be sure)—the tendency is for us to go back to our
old ways once Lent is over.
That’s
why the word for this Lent is permanent. Ultimately Lent is about growing in our
relationship with Jesus. That’s the purpose
of the extra prayer we engage in, the fasting and self-denial, the “giving up”
of certain things we like, the almsgiving and works of charity, the repentance
and the confession of our sins, watching the Best Lent Ever videos, etc.
All these
good things are supposed to help us grow closer to Jesus and to change us. But those changes are not supposed to end on
Easter Sunday. The positive changes that
we experience through our Lenten disciplines are changes that are supposed to
be “permanent”—or at least they’re changes that we should want to be permanent.
I’ll
give you one very quick example of what I mean.
I’ve known many people over the years who decided at the beginning of the
season of Lent to attend Mass every day.
And they did. (Well, they might
have missed Mass on a day or two, but for the most part they were faithful.) Then when Lent was over, they thought to
themselves, “You know, Mass is a great way to begin the day. I got a lot out of that experience. I think I grew closer to God. Maybe I’ll keep going for a while.” Well, “for a while” ended up becoming “for the
rest of their lives”.
Those people
experienced a change in and through a Lenten activity that had a permanent,
lasting effect on their lives.
This, by
the way, is the kind of thing the canonized saints of the Church experienced—sometimes
during the season of Lent; sometimes at another time of the year. Like early September. Right now I’m reading a book on St. Teresa of
Calcutta (Mother Teresa), and the author focuses quite a bit on a powerful
spiritual experience that Mother Teresa had on September 10, 1946, while she was
on a train traveling to her annual retreat.
On that day she experienced what she later referred to as her “call
within a call”. God called out of the
religious order she was a member of at the time, to eventually establish a new religious
order (the Missionaries of Charity), and to work with the poor, the sick, and
the dying in Calcutta and other places.
That experience—that
personal and powerful encounter with the Lord on that train in 1946—changed
Mother Teresa’s life! It had a permanent, lasting, positive effect on all that
she said and all that she did from that moment until the Lord called her home
on September 5, 1997. And it kept her on
the road to becoming a saint.
It’s my
prayer on this Ash Wednesday that our Lenten encounter with Jesus during the
next 40 days will have the same kind of permanent, lasting, positive effect on
us—and help us to become saints ourselves.
