An Acceptable Time
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. -- Collect for Ash Wednesday, BCP
I've hesitated to mention anything particular concerning Lent in my blog, because I have always in mind Screwtape's advice to Wormwood regarding his patient's spiritual advance: "Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is an excellent way of sterilising the seeds planted in him by the Enemy." I've been afraid that if I write anything about the sudden flashes that meet me when I am in church, or worse, if I encourage those flashes as things I can write about later for the satisfaction of edifying others -- then I shall have lost the good of them myself.
But there's another way in which I am almost driven to write these things so that I will remember them myself. My thoughts, like Keats's epitaph on his name, are writ in water, and if I don't write them I lose them. I often lament this as a failing of my own; but Wednesday when I knelt at the rail and the priest traced a cross of ashes on my forehead with the words, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return," I felt, along with the comfort of which I will speak in a minute, a faint reassurance that I was not meant to hold a permanent impression -- that God remembers this, and that it is all right.
The Gospel text for the Ash Wednesday service was Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21: the text about doing your fasting and praying and almsgiving in secret, so that God who sees in secret will reward you. I must confess it did seem somewhat ironic that we should read this text and then go forward to receive a visible mark on our foreheads as a sign that we were Lent-observant. But as I think on it, it still fits. In the family of the Church, everyone receives the same mark. Everyone is expected to give alms, and there is not (or ought not to be) a distinction as to what those alms are. Everyone fasts: everyone knocks three times on the breast -- mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. And, as the sermon I heard emphasized, Lent is meant to be a time of joy: simple joy. It is meant to encourage us to see these matters of penitence and giving as things that bring a simple delight -- if only one can bring one's mind to it.
In this context, during an "acceptable time" such as this, I find I can do so. Most of the time I can't stand the thought of being counted second, of trading away my right to fuss and fume for my little-claimed right to bend the knee of my heart. In Lent I can accept being limited, and small, and subordinate, and mortal: there is a comfort in knowing that I will return to dust that I can't find at other times, like those times I wake up with some form of a panic attack and feel that death is imminent. Well, what if it is? It's already covered in the plan.
In fact, seeing that Lent is such a time of joyful labor toward Easter, it seems a shame to waste that time not laboring, not including one another in our mercy. Like Dante on Mount Purgatory, hearing both sorrow and joyful grace from all the souls he meets, I learn that it is a time of courtesy.
Which brings me to my link of the day: an article on Desmond Tutu's Ash Wednesday address. Desmond Tutu is my new hero. I won't say anything much more about him, because I am almost completely ignorant of where he comes from and what his connections are, but I will say that his daughter was ordained priest last month, to the great joy of many, and that what I do know of him is worthy of a great deal of respect. So, go read the article.
Meanwhile I will go away and celebrate.
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. -- Collect for Ash Wednesday, BCP
I've hesitated to mention anything particular concerning Lent in my blog, because I have always in mind Screwtape's advice to Wormwood regarding his patient's spiritual advance: "Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is an excellent way of sterilising the seeds planted in him by the Enemy." I've been afraid that if I write anything about the sudden flashes that meet me when I am in church, or worse, if I encourage those flashes as things I can write about later for the satisfaction of edifying others -- then I shall have lost the good of them myself.
But there's another way in which I am almost driven to write these things so that I will remember them myself. My thoughts, like Keats's epitaph on his name, are writ in water, and if I don't write them I lose them. I often lament this as a failing of my own; but Wednesday when I knelt at the rail and the priest traced a cross of ashes on my forehead with the words, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return," I felt, along with the comfort of which I will speak in a minute, a faint reassurance that I was not meant to hold a permanent impression -- that God remembers this, and that it is all right.
The Gospel text for the Ash Wednesday service was Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21: the text about doing your fasting and praying and almsgiving in secret, so that God who sees in secret will reward you. I must confess it did seem somewhat ironic that we should read this text and then go forward to receive a visible mark on our foreheads as a sign that we were Lent-observant. But as I think on it, it still fits. In the family of the Church, everyone receives the same mark. Everyone is expected to give alms, and there is not (or ought not to be) a distinction as to what those alms are. Everyone fasts: everyone knocks three times on the breast -- mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. And, as the sermon I heard emphasized, Lent is meant to be a time of joy: simple joy. It is meant to encourage us to see these matters of penitence and giving as things that bring a simple delight -- if only one can bring one's mind to it.
In this context, during an "acceptable time" such as this, I find I can do so. Most of the time I can't stand the thought of being counted second, of trading away my right to fuss and fume for my little-claimed right to bend the knee of my heart. In Lent I can accept being limited, and small, and subordinate, and mortal: there is a comfort in knowing that I will return to dust that I can't find at other times, like those times I wake up with some form of a panic attack and feel that death is imminent. Well, what if it is? It's already covered in the plan.
In fact, seeing that Lent is such a time of joyful labor toward Easter, it seems a shame to waste that time not laboring, not including one another in our mercy. Like Dante on Mount Purgatory, hearing both sorrow and joyful grace from all the souls he meets, I learn that it is a time of courtesy.
Which brings me to my link of the day: an article on Desmond Tutu's Ash Wednesday address. Desmond Tutu is my new hero. I won't say anything much more about him, because I am almost completely ignorant of where he comes from and what his connections are, but I will say that his daughter was ordained priest last month, to the great joy of many, and that what I do know of him is worthy of a great deal of respect. So, go read the article.
Meanwhile I will go away and celebrate.
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