Ash Wednesday
From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul
ASH WEDNESDAY – COMBINED SERVICE
Sacred Heart and St Paul Cathedral Parishes
9 March 2011
HOMILY – FR JAMES LYONS
The city of Christchurch in ruins and the images of suffering and loss that have been our news since the devastating earthquake two weeks ago, are bold, if frightening, heralds of the season of Lent that begins today. The dust and ashes into which dreams and livelihoods have crumbled over these days show us how quickly life can change and how futile our attempts to control and dominate. But it is also from nothingness that we began, and so the ash provides a symbol of hope as well as despair.
The commercial fabric of Christchurch has been crushed but the tapestry of community life has shown itself remarkably resilient. While the infrastructure of a proud city lies twisted and unproductive, the hearts of its people are beating out in friendship and solidarity and have been quickly identified as the energy source for rebirth and renewal.
The Church’s use of ash to open her six week approach to Easter is a deliberate act of faith. She takes ash, the result of devastation, and says, with gospel certainty, Nothing is impossible for God! In Lent, we do not look towards anything our own hands have made but towards an experience that, without faith, we would not even dare to dream of: resurrection!
Each day of the Lenten journey invites us closer and closer, until we hear the cries for blood and see the tortured body and are forced to face our own mortality. How terrible if it were to end there in the blackout of Calvary. But the dawn of Easter puts darkness in its place and the power of God to create life from the nothingness of death becomes our hope.
One of the images that will stay with me from the Christchurch tragedy is the picture of a rescuer carrying the sacred parchments from the destroyed synagogue. The care and dignity with which the person brought out the scrolls was described by a tearful Rabbi as though he was holding a baby. There needs to be something of that sense of wonder and awe in us as we enter this sacred season.
Our two traditions of Catholicism are held in the embrace of the one Word, Jesus Christ. There is respect and great love in the Word for us and we are treasured gifts in the one body of Christ. This makes our being together this evening more than just a meeting. Our respect for what we hold and for what holds us can make this night and the season before us, a further step towards a resurrection for the Church beyond all our imagining.
The prophet Joel tells us that it is only through broken hearts that we can find our way to God. This is being acted out for us in the people of Christchurch whose hearts – traumatised and broken two weeks ago – are now beating in support of one another. Only those who know they are broken can begin the process of renewal. The ashes of this night help us face the truth of our nothingness before God; the Lenten days can help us find our way to each other.
Lent is a wonderful opportunity to not only recommit to life, but to reconnect with all that gives me life and to see more clearly the part that I can and must play in giving life to others. This reconnecting is the way of responding to God’s call to return. We enter a blessed 40-day moment in which we open ourselves for God to do - what we might well consider to be - the impossible: turning our apathy into energy; our hesitancy into confidence; our selfishness into self-giving – creating from the ashes of our failed or half-hearted attempts, a life of goodness and joy.
With humble, contrite hearts, but with great confidence in God’s power to save, we begin our Lenten journey.
