03-06 - Ash Wednesday - Ritual Forgiveness

One thing that I really love about our Church is our rituals.  There are some things that we have done so many times, that take in all of our senses, that really help us to shift our whole focus, everything about our lives.  There are so many thing that we can understand with our head that it's supposed to happen.  Yet, it really takes time for us to shift our thinking, to really change.  The rituals of our Church help us to really make our faith not just about the thoughts in our head, but to engage our whole person.  It's one thing to talk about God.  It's quite another thing to talk to God, to really know him.  It's one thing to see two people in love and to know they are in love.  It's quite another thing to really experience that love, to be a part of it.

Today, we begin the season of lent, Everything changes today, Our Colors change, the Church becomes rather stark.  The flowers are gone, and things should feel a little empty.  The Color is purple, both as the color of royalty, and the color our bruises turn when we're injured.  Today is a day of fasting and abstinence from meat.  Everything about our Church seems to really point to the fact that something is different now…Lent is a time when we practice self-discipline, when we give things up, when we intentionally restrain ourselves….because it's only when we're really, honestly able to say no…that we really become free to say yes.

Just a few days ago, I was listening to Catholic radio just a few days ago, and I heard what I think is probably my favorite Explaination of Ash Wednesday.  They starting by asking a simple question, that I hadn't really thought about.  In our society, just like in Church we have all sorts of rituals, ways we express publicly all sorts of things, even if we don't quite think of them that way.  When we hear someone is sick, we send them a get well card.  If they're in the Hospital, we might bring balloons or flowers.  When someone is having a baby, we hold a baby shower. When families get together for thanksgiving we all sit down to eat Turkey.  When a couple wants to get married, the guy buys a ring, gets down on one knee and asks her if she will marry him.  When kids in school are dating, he'll give her his letterman jacket to wear.  Those are all rituals, and they help us connect, not just in our head, but our whole person, with the realities around us.

When I was listening, the person on the radio said, there's one ritual though, that our world doesn't have…or at least we don't have a good one.  What do we do, really, when we've messed up, and we're sincerely sorry?  What do we do when we want to ask someone's forgiveness, or we want to publicly repent of something we've done wrong because everybody already knows?  The girl on the radio suggested the closest thing we have to a ritual like that, is when a politician mis-speaks, they call the big press conference, and they try to do volunteer work, or make a big donation to a charity that helps with whatever the thing was they mis-spoke about.    But even there, do we ever trust them after that?  Sadly, not really.  Our world has a very, very hard time with the idea that people can really change, that real forgiveness is really possible.

In our own lives, when someone has hurt us, think about the things we usually say?  When someone looks at us and apologizes and we say, "oh that's ok."  or "don't worry about it."  Even if it's not really ok, or we are still upset about it.  Listen to the words we tend to use, they suggest there wasn't "really" a problem.  Sadly, I think it's because if there was a real problem, we're often not sure how to get past it.  Forgiveness, real forgiveness is hard.

 In this history of our Church though, we really had rituals that helped someone who had done wrong to make a real penance, to really rejoin the community to allow someone to really say they were sorry in a way that was meaningful.  That was called a public penance.  It gave us rituals that said…I'm sorry.  It's those rituals that we hear about in the book of Joel as God calls out to the people "Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning."  That was the idea.  It wasn't that somehow how God delighted in making awful thing happen.  It was that by those rituals, it enabled someone who had messed up to really express their sorrow.  It allowed people to know that they had real heartfelt sorrow, and because of that, it enabled the whole process of forgiveness to begin.  The honesty and sincerity of those rituals, were the very think that helped the person rejoin the community, to come home, to be reunited, to be forgiven.

Today, when we take the ashes on our foreheads, that's what we're saying.  I'm sorry for the things I have done to hurt others.  I know I'm a sinner, I know I'm hurt and I've hurt others.  I want to do better.  I have to say as a priest, there is no greater joy than when someone who had been away from God for a long time, really honestly takes part in the sacrament of confession, when I get to play a role in helping that person let go of the huge weight they've been carrying around forever, to acknowledge the hurt, and really find healing and forgiveness before God.  To see that light reappear in that person's heart, after they had thought it was gone.  To walk with a person as they come to know that God loves them, even in their darkest days, and always wants to see them healed, It's the most beautiful thing in the world, but it can only happen, when we're open to being honest with ourselves about what we've done wrong….when we're open to the rituals that help us to say with our whole being, "I'm sorry" so that taking it seriously, we can really be forgiven and welcomed back into the community.

That's what happens, when we accept those ashes on our foreheads.  We accept the fact that we're broken, we've messed up, we've hurt others, and we're willing to recognize that, willing to say we're sorry….so that we can find real, true, lasting healing, and real forgiveness.