THE BISHOP'S CROZIER: Start preparing now for Ash Wednesday

By Bishop James R. Golka

In just a very short time, we will be beginning the season of Lent. Often, in the busyness of our lives, this holy season of Lent can creep up on us. All of a sudden it is Ash Wednesday, and we have done little to nothing to prepare for this penitential season.

I would like to reflect now, before Lent begins, on how we can open our hearts to the grace that is given to us during this season so that we can experience a true turning of our hearts to God. 

Ash Wednesday is a powerful beginning to Lent. It is a stark reminder that we will one day return to God and face his judgement.  This is a great act of mercy that the Church gives us every year, to call us to repentance, and to turn to the Lord with contrite hearts.   The very first words from the Liturgy of the Word on Ash Wednesday really describes how we are to live out the season of Lent: “Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.”  (Joel 2:12-13)

These two verses from the book of the prophet Joel focus on the theme of the heart.  First, we are called to return to the Lord “with your whole heart.”  This is a very important call of the Lord that can easily be overlooked.  In the New Testament, conversion is the Greek word “metanoia,” which means “to turn around.” Conversion is literally a turning away from sin and, as the prophet Joel exhorts, a “return to the Lord,” and this return to the Lord is “with your whole heart.”  To capture the radical nature of this conversion, we must understand the biblical understanding of the word “heart.”

In our culture, the heart is associated with feelings, especially the emotion of love, but there is a much greater meaning to the word heart in the biblical context. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) gives a beautiful description of this biblical notion of the human heart: “The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place ‘to which I withdraw.’ The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.”  (CCC, No. 2563) 

Therefore, returning to God with all our hearts is a total and complete gift of ourselves to God.  God wants our hearts because he wants all of us!  This why the prophet Joel next says, “Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord your God.” God desires for us to rend our hearts, to radically open ourselves to him so that he can redeem and heal what is wounded by sin and elevate and strengthen all of the gifts and goodness in us.  Sometimes it is easy to see conversion through the external actions that we do — fasting, almsgiving, and giving up sweets or other things for Lent.  However, these external actions are only good and efficacious if they come from the heart and lead to the conversion of heart.  This is why prayerful preparation for the season of Lent and how we are going to live out this season in the things we give up, the deeper commitment to prayer, and the acts of service and charity, come from our love of God and neighbor and help bring about the rooting out and healing of sin in our hearts.  So, I encourage all of us in these final days before Lent to go before the Lord in prayer and open our hearts to him and ask the Holy Spirit how he wants us to live out this Lenten season.  Perhaps God is calling us to a deeper way of living out this holy season that will allow us to open our hearts and return to him even more powerfully than we can imagine. 

The other heart that the prophet Joel speaks of is God’s heart, and the scripture passage gives us a glimpse into the wondrous heart of God: “For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.” What confidence we can have in returning to God’s merciful heart, especially the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus which eternally burns with great love for us!  Pope Francis opens his recent encyclical letter on the Sacred Heart describing this great love of Jesus for us: “‘He loved us’, Saint Paul says of Christ (cf. Rom 8:37), in order to make us realize that nothing can ever ‘separate us’ from that love (Rom 8:39). Paul could say this with certainty because Jesus himself had told his disciples, ‘I have loved you’ (Jn 15:9, 12). Even now, the Lord says to us, ‘I have called you friends’ (Jn 15:15). His open heart has gone before us and waits for us, unconditionally, asking only to offer us his love and friendship. For ‘he loved us first’ (cf. 1 Jn 4:10). Because of Jesus, ‘we have come to know and believe in the love that God has for us’” (1 Jn 4:16). (Dilexit nos,1)

In this Lenten season, Jesus waits for us with a heart that is literally torn open in unfathomable, merciful love by the lance that pierced it during his crucifixion. How much more should all of us with great love and trust rend open our hearts and return to him this Lent? There is no sin, no wound, no past, or no struggle that is bigger than the mercy of God. With great love and trust let us rend open our hearts and return to him, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-39)