Reading: Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday 4

by Thomas Merton

…Lent is not a season of punishment so much as one of healing… a season of special reflection and prayer, a forty-day retreat in which each Christian, to the extent he is able, tries to follow Christ into the desert by prayer and fasting…

The cross of ashes, traced upon the forehead of each Christian… is the sign of Christ’s victory over death. The words “Remember man that thou art dust, and that to dust thou shalt return” are not to be taken as… a kind of “sacrament of death”… The declaration that the body must fall temporarily into dust is a challenge to spiritual combat, that our burial may be “in Christ” and that we may rise with Him to “live unto God.”…

Only the inner rending, the tearing of the heart, brings this joy. It lets out our sins, and lets in the clean air of God’s spring, the sunlight of the days that advance toward Easter. Rending of the garments lets in nothing but the cold. The rending of the heart which is spoken of in Joel is that “tearing away” from ourselves… the “oldness” of the old man, wearied with the boredom and drudgery of an indifferent existence, that we may turn to God and taste His mercy…

To say there is joy in Ash Wednesday is not to empty the procession of its sorrows and anguish. “Save me O God… for the waters are come in even unto my soul.” This is not a song of joy. If we present our selves before God to receive ashes from the hand of the priest it is because we are convinced of our sinfulness. … A sinner is a drowning man, a sinking ship. The waters are bursting into him on all sides… They are closing over his head, and he cries out to God: “the waters are come in even unto my soul.”…

Ash Wednesday is for people who know what it means for their soul to be logged with these icy waters: all of us are such people, if only we can realize it… The light of Lent is given us to help us with this realization.

Nevertheless, the liturgy of Lent is not focused on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God… Nowhere will we find more tender expressions of the divine mercy than on this day… In the Introit for Ash Wednesday we sing: “You have mercy upon all, O Lord, and hate none of those which You have made.”

…Those who deny Him say they do so because evil in the world could be the work only of a God that hated the world. But even those who profess to love Him regard Him too often as a furious Father, who seeks only to punish and revenge Himself for the evil that is done “against Him”… This is not the God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who Himself “hides” our sins and gets them out of sight, like a mother making quick and efficient repairs on the soiled face of a child just before entering a house where he ought to appear clean… is everywhere shown to us as “plenteous in mercy”.

And from the infinite treasure of His mercies He draws forth the gift of compunction…The God of Lent is like a calm sea of mercy. In Him there is no anger. This “hiding” of God’s severity is not a subterfuge. It is a revelation of His true nature. He is not severe…He is love. Love becomes severe only to those who make Him severe for themselves. Love is hard only to those who refuse Him. It is not, and cannot be Love’s will to be refused. Therefore it is not and cannot be Love’s will to be severe and punish… Those who refuse Him are severe to themselves, and immolate themselves to the blood-thirsty god of their own self-love. It is from this idol that Love would deliver us. To such bitter servitude, Love would never condemn us.

4 Merton, Thomas. Seasons of Celebration. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965. 113-121. 9