Context
This Ash Wednesday, we step into Lent, commemorating Jesus’ forty days of fasting in the desert before he began his public ministry. Lent is a time of preparation for the coming Easter celebration. It begins with the smearing of ashes on our foreheads. It’s a graphic sign of our mortality and our need for mercy. Morbid? Maybe.
But it’s also one of the most honest and life-giving traditions of the Church. It's captured in the Latin phrase memento mori (remember you must die). One of the great spiritual ironies is that a faith that deals honestly with the reality of mortality, sin and death is on the path to freedom and life. Without this honesty, we set the conditions for greater pain, suffering and violence.
Lent is a particularly valuable tonic, especially for those in the dominant culture whose systematic denial of death not only compounds our own suffering, but also the suffering of the most vulnerable — those who are not invited to practice memento mori, but are forced to live it.
Question
What would it look like to practice memento mori not as a descent into despair, but as a path toward freedom and life this Lent?
Expand the rows below for more resources for Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday in Lent.
Gospel Lectionary Text
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
6:1 "Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
6:2 "So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.
6:3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
6:4 so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
6:5 "And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.
6:6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
6:16 "And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.
6:17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face,
6:18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
6:19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal,
6:20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.
6:21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Reflections
Ash Wednesday – Storing Up Treasures
By Susan Okamoto Lane |
What struck me more than Chief Seattle’s monument were the rows of plain, worn cement markers that said only “Unknown.” As I walked slowly among them, I wondered about the people and stories buried here. How did they live? How did they die? How old were they? Did they have families? What did they laugh...
Ash Wednesday: The Sound of the Genuine
By Kris Rocke |
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Christians worldwide will enter into a heightened time (40 days) of prayer, reflection, and spiritual companionship with Jesus to the Resurrection by way of the cross. Here at Street Psalms, we are grateful for this annual pilgrimage that awakens our heart to its deepest desire. Given the…
Ash Wednesday: Desire
By Kris Rocke |
In the inner room we can finally stop acting. In the inner room we are free of the crowds who so easily rule and run us like puppets. In the inner room, we stop feeding on the unstable and fickle desires of others and learn to borrow our desires from the One who desires us.
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Girardian Lectionary Weekly Reflection:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
Blessing the Dust
by Jan Richardson
All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners
or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?
This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.
This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.
This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
Prayer
This week, the call to prayer comes from the Street Psalms Prayer of Discernment:
Let us pray.
Gracious God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of Life, have mercy on us. Reveal yourself in all things, to all things, and through all things. Grant us the gift of becoming a community of the incarnation, mystery of Word made flesh, who sees and celebrates Good News in hard places. Give us the tongue of a teacher to sustain the weary with the Word, and free leaders from all walks of life to love their city and seek its peace with the Gospel of Jesus.
Gospel Lectionary Text
Matthew 4:1-11
4:1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
4:2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.
4:3 The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."
4:4 But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
4:5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple,
4:6 saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"
4:7 Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"
4:8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor;
4:9 and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me."
4:10 Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"
4:11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
Reflections
It is Written
By Scott Dewey |
“God hates,” men told her. Many men in fact, many times. Because they were religious, she believed them, because she wished to believe in God. The men held the sacred writings, copied from goat skins to gilded pages to church multimedia screens.
Setting Out From Where You Are
By Joel Van Dyke |
After an encounter with the shadowlands of Ash Wednesday, we now sit silently in front of an opened curtain, revealing the five-week theater that is the Valley of Lent. The Gospel narrative for the first Sunday of Lent is that of the desert temptation.
Wilderness Wander – Setting out from where you are
By Joel Van Dyke |
“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Matthew 4:1-11 After an encounter with the shadowlands of Ash Wednesday two days ago, we now sit silently in front of an opened curtain revealing the five-week theater that is the Valley of Lent. As is so often the…
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Girardian Lectionary Weekly Reflection:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
Go to the Limits of Your Longing
by Rilke
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Prayer
This week, the call to prayer comes from the Street Psalms Prayer of Discernment:
Let us pray.
Gracious God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of Life, have mercy on us. Reveal yourself in all things, to all things, and through all things. Grant us the gift of becoming a community of the incarnation, mystery of Word made flesh, who sees and celebrates Good News in hard places. Give us the tongue of a teacher to sustain the weary with the Word, and free leaders from all walks of life to love their city and seek its peace with the Gospel of Jesus.
