A Homily for Ash Wednesday
Readings: Joel 2:12-18 2 Corinthians 5:20—6: 2 Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18
Love cannot be silent. It must speak. We cannot love without going outside ourselves, which is why love must express itself.
Of course, words alone are not enough. Everything we do and all that we are must be drawn into the dialogue of love. But on Valentine’s Day, we remind ourselves that words of love are needed. They are a good place to begin.
You need only to read candy hearts to recall what sort of things we say on Valentine’s Day:
Love you I’m yours
All mine
Ask me
Puppy love
All of me
What can we say? Love must express itself. We must go out of ourselves to love another. And just think! Someone in candy land gets paid to think of more ways to say “I love you.”
Of course, in real life, love must often say more than what a candy heart can. It must say things like:
Mommy loves you, but that is not nice.
Daddy knows that you can do better than that.
I love you. I know that you can do this.
I love you, but you’ve got to change.
If you love me, I need this from you.
This year Ash Wednesday coincides with Valentine’s Day, and what appears to be an odd conjunction on the calendar might indeed be revelatory. Why? Because Ash Wednesday is all about love speaking, love expressing itself.
Through the ministry of the church, we hear:
Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.
Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.
These words are confrontational, perhaps even cutting. Yet they are spoken with love. In the first line, the church tells us that while so much is illusion and delusion, the truest of loves awaits us. The second line tells us that we need only to turn around, change our ways, and we will see this love.
view:related_content]
Words alone are never enough. At least human words are not. However, the word God speaks is sufficient. And God has spoken the greatest single word of love to us when he spoke his eternal word, his son Jesus Christ. In both the life he lived and the death he suffered, Jesus bespeaks God’s word of love to us.
It takes a lifetime to understand what we have heard in Jesus, to take it in and to respond. Each year the church journeys again into the mystery that is the life, the dying and the rising of Christ. Each year, she ponders the word of love spoken into her midst, and she begins this journey by speaking words of love to each of us. She speaks them because she loves us.
Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.
Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.
