One of the ways we might understand and approach Lent is as a pilgrimage, to know that in Lent we are being invited to undertake a journey of 40 days, a journey whose end is the joy of Easter Sunday. It is important that we keep the destination in mind, we are journeying towards the cross and the resurrection of Christ, walking towards our own death and rebirth, our own baptism and the renewal of our baptismal vows, towards becoming Christian again in the renewal of the Holy Spirit.
We need to begin again each year, afresh.
Ash Wednesday marks this point where we begin again, we acknowledge our sin and brokenness, our need of God’s grace and forgiveness, our need for God to do within us what we cannot do ourselves. This is the point of any discipline, any small concrete practice we might keep for Lent. We do it in order to make a bit more space, a bit more room for the Holy Spirit within us, to open our hearts just that little bit more, so that we might receive just that little bit more of the love and grace of God.
Every year we need to make this journey, this pilgrimage.
Ash Wednesday is the moment when the prodigal son comes to his senses and decides to make the journey back to his Father. Like him we acknowledge that we too have wandered far from home, like him we find ourselves in a strange land, we too are in exile, we too have spent all our resources, we are burnt out, run dry, empty and hungry. We don’t want to go it alone anyone. We want to live in our Father’s house again. We having nothing left to lose.
What might encourage us to set out on our Lenten journey is the image of the Father watching and waiting for our return. To imagine ourselves being embraced and kissed, tears flowing, being dressed in the finest robe, a ring put on our finger, shoes on our feet, that God is preparing a feast to celebrate our return. We are not going to be slinking in unnoticed.
I wonder if we can imagine that this is what mercy looks like, this is what it means to return to God, to receive such a welcome?
There is another son in the story of course. The older son who does not feel any of the joy of the Father at his brother’s return. He wanted to see his selfish, reckless, feckless younger brother get punished, banished to the fields, to working with the hired hands, to ensure he would really know his unworthiness.
We all have something of the older son within us, the person who has worked hard and deserves more, is resentful, judgemental, and angry. The story does not tell us what the older son had to do to be changed, to have his heart opened to mercy and forgiveness, but we could reflect that he too needs to go on a Lenten pilgrimage, he too needs a journey to grasp who his Father really is, the one he does not yet know despite always being with him, serving him day in and out, to grasp that all that Father has is already his, there is nothing to be earned, or proved.
This Lent we might reflect on who we are in the story, are we the prodigal son – wasted and burned out, or are we the angry, judgemental, resentful older son? Or are there elements of both within us? How might we become more like the Father, full of compassion, waiting and watching for those on the road home.
As we come to the imposition of ashes to mark the beginning of our pilgrimage this Lent, I want to share these words which echo something of what I have been sharing:
‘On Ash Wednesday, we are marked with ashes and reminded that we are mortal. It is one of the few moments in the year when the Church refuses to soften her language. We are dust. We will die. That is not a threat. It is a fact.
There is something bracing about beginning there. Lent does not start with self-improvement or vague aspiration, it starts with truth.
That truth is not meant to crush us, it’s meant to free us from pretending. When we accept our limits, our need for grace becomes less abstract. We are not striving to be impressive before God. We are returning to him as creatures who depend on mercy.
Given another chance to begin.‘
Amen.
[Quoted from The Ember Post on Substack by someone who calls themselves ‘The Hopeful Ordinand’].
