Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Osmond Anike

Readings:

First Reading: Joel 2:12-18 – Let your hearts be broken, not your garments torn.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 50(51):3-6, 12-14, 17 – Have mercy on us, O Lord, for we have sinned.

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2 – Be reconciled to God.

Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 – Your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.

Lent is a period of spiritual exercise. We enter into a forty-day period (quarantine), during which we engage in various forms of spiritual exercise. The aim of bodily exercise is not just to attain health and shape but to maintain them. It is much easier to attain shape, but more difficult to maintain it. To maintain shape, one needs to be in constant alertness and awareness of one’s ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. In other words, the exercises must continue in some form or the other. When you first engage in an exercise, this signals the beginning of a dream-health and a dream-shape, not the end of it. This is very much the case with our Lenten spiritual exercises. They mark the beginning not the end of our spiritual health. Therefore, our Lenten spiritual exercises are not aimed at gaining spiritual health alone, but more importantly, at maintaining it all through our lives.

The three principal spiritual exercises that Jesus recommends for us during this Lenten period are: Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving. Of course none of these exercises were new to the Jews. As a matter of fact they form part and parcel of what constituted Jewish spirituality. Any good Jew was obliged to practice the three exercises as a way of confirming his “righteousness”. In recommending these exercises, however, Jesus emphasized some dimension that was totally lacking in their Pharisaic (Jewish) practices. While most Pharisees practiced these exercises as external showbiz, Jesus insisted that one’s internal convictions are more important than mere external observance. Actually this emphasis on inner change of heart rather than on external rituals has always been there from the beginning, but was gradually relegated to the background by the Pharisees in favour of a more flamboyant form of spirituality. The prophet Joel in the first reading of today, for instance, admonished the people thus: “Let your hearts be broken, not your garments torn”. An external way to demonstrate the act of penance among the Jews was to physically tear one’s garments. In insisting on tearing one’s heart instead, Joel is redirecting the people to embrace the true meaning of repentance and penance.

It was in line with this Joel’s insistence that Jesus started dismantling the practices of spirituality among his people that were deceptive and misleading: “Be careful”, he said, “not to parade your good deeds before men to attract their notice”. He then went ahead to warn them how not to give alms, how not to pray and how not to fast. His alternatives on how to do these things point to his belief that what goes on internally in one’s heart is more consequential than what one exhibits externally. Spirituality is not, and should never be, a show business as many people are making it to appear nowadays. Unfortunately, today, it appears than the more theatrical one performs on the stage or on the altar, the more “famous” he/she becomes, and the more followers he/she attracts. But the basic questions that Jesus implied in his teachings on the practices of these spiritual exercises are: When you pray, with whom do you communicate – God, or the people? Whose attention are you trying to attract when you fast and when you give alms – God’s or the people’s? If we are able to answer these basic questions, it will help us tone down all the hullabaloos that masquerade as spirituality.

Lent is not a period of show business; it is a period of inner conversion; a period of soul searching. It is a period in which we tear our hearts not our garments. It provides us with an opportunity to deconstruct our spiritual lives in order to better reconstruct them. Symbolically, we shall receive ashes to demonstrate that we are dusts, and unto dusts we shall return; and to remind us to turn away from sin and live the gospel. Although the practice of distributing ashes on Ash Wednesday started as an offshoot of the Jewish practice of sprinkling ashes on the head as a sign of repentance; and although ashes were even imposed both on the early catechumens when they began their preparation time for baptism and on confessed sinners of that era as part of the public penitential process, in its current practice and usage, ashes do not connote the fact of penance or fasting (something that would have been contrary to what Jesus preached against in today’s gospel). It is rather a reminder that the world as we know it is passing away, and that this life does not last forever. We should therefore not live our lives as if we will never die. We should pay particular attention to that part of us that do not return as dusts namely, our souls.

As we journey through these 40 days of Lent, we are reminded by St. Paul in the second reading that we are ambassadors for Christ, and therefore, we have to be reconciled to God because, “now is the favourable time; this is the day of salvation”. Our intense spiritual exercises this period should not end with the period. We should always strive to keep spiritually fit by making this exercises a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block to our spiritual health.