Ash Wednesday: Entering into the "Lenten Desert" with Ashes on Foreheads, Led and Strengthened by the Holy Spirit

On Ash Wednesday, as we begin with our Lenten journey, we clearly hear God calling us to return to Him with all our hearts, with fasting and weeping and mourning (Joel 2:12). “With all our hearts” means that we totally surrender our hearts to God’s care so that our old hearts of sin are torn and reconstructed anew by gracious God of compassion (Joel 2:13). It is not garments that we tear but our sinful heart in expressing our genuine remorse. So we now mourn a loss of our innocence and enter Lenten Season with our repentance and hope for innocence to be restored in our purified renewed hearts. For us to go through this renewal through penance and conversion, God is now calling us all to gather, to return to God (Joel 2:15-18). And this is how we begin our Lenten with our sincere repentance and desire for renewal through conversion.

The context of the First Reading text (Joel 2:12-18) is that Joel, carrying God’s message, called Judah to repent in response to the great locust plague and severe draught to avert greater calamities out of God’s wrath (Joel 1:1-2:11).  This is a parallel to Jonah calling the Ninevites to repent in order to prevent the total destruction out of God’s wrath in 40 days (Jonah 3:1-10). In a way, we, as sinners, are like the Israelites who drifted away from God and His way in Judah and the Ninevites, being called to return to God and repent. And as the Ninevites had the 40-day “grace period” to repent and avert devastating consequences of their sin, we also have the 40 days of Lent to repent.  So this is how we begin our Lenten Season on Ash Wednesday.

As we come together and return to God, ripping our sinful hearts in expressing our remorse and contrition, He will shower us with His mercy to make us clean and anew.  Verbally, we also confess our sin and need for His mercy, as reflected in the Responsorial Psalm (51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 14, 17). This is how we return to God and to His mercy, as we seek the Sacrament of Reconciliation, confessing our sin and our need for God’s mercy.

For Lent, we return to God for reconciliation. This is why Paul, as Christ’s ambassador, calls us to be reconciled to God in order to become righteous in Christ now (2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2). We cannot delay or postpone our return to God because now is the time of God’s grace and the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2).

In the Gospel Reading (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18), which is a part of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches on three core principles of our Lenten commitment: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In this reading, Jesus reminds us that our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, are not to be made a display to others. We pray rather in private, give alms in secret, and fast as if not fasting.  It is because Jesus wants to make sure that our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, are not done out of self-righteousness. We commit ourselves to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, with humility. Making these Lenten commitments a show to draw public attention to ourselves is not an option.

As we begin Lent on Ash Wednesday, we have blessed ashes smeared on our foreheads.  Ministers who distribute ashes to us say, “Repent and believe in the Gospel"(Mark 1:15) or "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return"(Genesis 3:19). Thus, the ashes on our foreheads remind us of our need for penance and mortality.

Ash is symbolic to penance (e.g. Job 42:6; Jonah 3:5-6). In juxtaposing to dust (עָפָ֖ר/apar) to ashes ( אֵפֶרh/epher), we are humbly reminded that we are nothing but dirt or ashes, when life (Spirit) is taken away from us (i.e. Genesis 2:7; cf. John 6:63; Romans 8:6; James 2:26a). In fact, we are turn into ashes when our lifeless (spiritless) bodies are cremated, and they can be return to the earth and become dusts of the earth, from which we came from. In fact, the word, “אֵפֶרh/epher” can also mean dust, in addition to ashes. Therefore, עָפָ֖ר/apar and אֵפֶרh/epher are not in parallel but also synonymous. 

We must repent and believe in the Gospel because we have turned the paradise (Eden) into a hostile desert, because our ancestors, Adam and Eve, sinned against God by falling to Satan’s cunning temptation (Genesis 3:1-24). Though God banished from Eden (Genesis 1:23), the offspring of Adam and Eve are not necessarily abandoned by God. God’s care for the offspring of Adam and Eve was reflected in His covenant with Noah, as reflected in the First Reading of the First Sunday of Lent, Cycle B (Genesis 9:8-15).

For Lent, with our sincere contrition, we enter the desert and spend 40 days there, praying, fasting, and giving alms, in order to return to God. And these 40 days of Lent are juxtaposed to the 40 days and night that Jesus spent among wild beasts and angels in the desert to be tempted, as reflected in the Gospel Reading of the First Sunday of Lent, Cycle B (Mark 1:12-15). It means that we are to be tested for our earnestness in our “Lenten desert”, in dealing with carnal urges and impulsiveness, as well as, Satan’s attacks, including temptations.

Though it is arid, desert can be a serene place. But as the presence of wild beasts there represents, it can be a place of hostility. And it is where Satan comes to attack us.

Are you set to deal with these challenges in your “Lenten desert”?

Remember, when Jesus spent 40 days and night in the desert to be tempted, he was also with angels. As they are purely spiritual beings, they represent the Holy Spirit in the desert, to counter wild beasts, which represent our carnal aspect and ego, which make us susceptible to Satan’s attacks. Knowing this, we make sure that we begin our Lenten journey in the desert, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, letting the Holy Spirit minister to us. To maximize the benefits of the Holy Spirit, to fight carnal urges and egocentric forces, which lead to sin, we must enter the “Lenten desert” with humble and contrite hearts.