Today is Ash Wednesday, as well as the beginning of the Lenten season when we are encouraged to spend forty days renewing our focus on the Lord and preparing for the joy of Easter. We are marked with ashes not only as a sign of our mortality, not only as a reminder of God’s solemn words to Adam in the Garden (Genesis 3:19), but these ashes are placed on us in the manner of a Cross: we remember that the Cross, for those who embrace it, triumphs over death. “For he knows how we are formed, remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14), and He desires us to remember this as well, lest we grow too attached to this world, this life, and forsake the life He offers us in the world to come.
Lent gives us an opportunity to renew our focus on that world, to detach ourselves from this one, by three primary means: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In prayer we deepen our relationship with the God we hope to be in communion with for eternity. In fasting we grow in discipline over our bodies so that we are not governed by its impulses but rather our own will; we learn to overcome our desire for physical pleasure in exchange for what is best for our soul. In almsgiving we cultivate a new relationship with our possessions, particularly our wealth, so that we might, on the day of our judgement, be like those on the King’s right hand who cared for Him in His need by caring for the least of His people (Matthew 25:34-40).
Today Jesus not only exhorts us to these means, but He exhorts us to do them with the utmost freedom, to do them purely for the glory of God and only for whatever reward He might see fit to give us. It feels so good, does it not, when the world cheers us on for our good deeds, when we receive thanks and recognition? Yet we can easily fall into the trap of doing good deeds for the sake of that recognition, and feeling good for what we’ve done, and we become satisfied with these things. But if we are seeking to grow as children of God, after the example of Jesus, then we must also give alms and good service to those who would not thank us. “…love your enemies,” Jesus tells us, “and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Luke 6:35). When we pray, we ought to remember Who it is to Whom we pray; whose attention do we desire? When we fast, are we fasting from worldly things to feast upon heavenly things, or do we call attention to ourselves, complaining of our hunger or having to eat things we would not normally eat? Do we miss the point of meatless Fridays by going out to expensive seafood dinners because, after all, fish is fish?
The character of today ought to mark the whole of Lent: we bear constantly in mind our mortality and dependence upon God, and we double our efforts to refocus our lives upon Him who fasted and prayed for us, who gave His life to us poor sinners as the ultimate act of almsgiving. You are indeed dust, and to dust you shall return; how incredible is it that the Son of God would go to war against Hell, sacrificing His own life, that you might one day rise from the dust to live forever!