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A
SH
W
EDNESDAY
Joel 2:12-18
Psalms 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 14 and 17
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18
S
UMMARY
Jesus chides the Pharisees for practicing almsgiving, prayer and fasting for all the wrong rea-
sons. Some Pharisees are more interested in the show of outward appearances than in the
inner work that brings us closer to God.
R
EFLECTION
Lent is such an important time in our Church calendar: it’s a wonderful time
of reflection on where are with our relationships with God and with one an-
other, as we prepare for the Triduum. But to be honest with you, while I love
the season of Lent NOW, I have actually spent a good part of my early life
avoiding Lent. Growing up as an Anglican in Bermuda, not only did Lent
seem much less important than Christmas, but the whole period of Lent was
dominated for me by the two days that bookmarked it: Shrove Tuesday and
Good Friday. And I have to say that was for the wrong reasons!!! On
Shrove Tuesday, my mother always made English pancakes, delicious thin
crepes served with lemon and sugar. We didn’t observe Ash Wednesday
and the rest of Lent passed by without any real consciousness of it, until we
got to Good Friday. On Good Friday, a public holiday, we followed the Ber-
mudian custom of flying kites—beautiful geometric creations crafted out of
colorful tissue paper and wooden sticks nailed together like a cross. The
kite flying tradition symbolizes Jesus’ ascent into heaven and that was the
closest we ever came to a religious observance on Good Friday.
After I became a Catholic, Lent was inescapably embedded in my consciousness, but for
years I dreaded the weeks leading up to Good Friday and the inevitability of it all: the reliving
of Jesus’ betrayal, his agony on the cross and his death. I yearned for the good old days when
I could get through Good Friday by flying kites, skating over the appalling realization of what
we had done to Jesus, and making it safely, painlessly, to the Resurrection and Easter Day. I
didn’t get Lent.
I suspect that in my response to Lent I was not alone. Christmas is so much easier, which
might explain why it is much more widely celebrated, even by non-Christians, than Lent and
Easter, the pinnacles of our liturgical year. Christmas has the lovely stories of faith with an-
gels, shepherds, exotic wise men on camels, the baby Jesus in the stable, the doting saintly
parents, the wicked villain looming in the background, and the successful escape from the jaws
of death to Egypt. Christmas has all the ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster! Lent is much
more like one of those dark, foreign films that only film aficionados go and see. You know: the
ones with the subtitles and the cryptic plots that you’re embarrassed to admit you don’t under-
stand. Lent is full of images of repentance, ashes, dying, suffering, crosses...not exactly the
easiest things to market to a world that is looking for feel-good solutions and happy endings.
And then somewhere in the course of my faith journey, things began shifting and Lent started
taking hold of me, it started becoming more important than Christmas. You have to live a little,
fail in some way, suffer, lose what’s important to you, have your heart broken, make mistakes,