Readings – http://www.usccb.org/nab/030911.shtml
This was my short prepared homily (also available in Spanish) for our bilingual Mass at Annunciata on Ash Wednesday, 2011.
Most of our lives we live in Ordinary Time, and that’s fine because God placed us in this world and we are asked to find blessing in the day-to-day. But during the year then, there are special times, like this time of Lent which we celebrate in preparation for Easter, which ask us to step out of the day to day and to reflect on our direction in life. How is our relationship with God? How are our relationships with others? This is to help us to live a life of meaning and not to simply to sleep-walk through life taking it for granted, others and God for granted.
All of us have things that we can work on, to make us better people and mostly kinder people towards our brothers and sisters who accompany us during this time which we walk this world and who, if we believe, will accompany us even after we die. We’re in this project of Life together.
So let us choose to work on something this year. It could be prayer. It could be working to fix a relationship or two that needs repair. It could be simply to try to live more modestly, remembering that what we take from this world, which is beyond our needs, we often take from somebody else who may actually need it much more than we.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus asks us to do this quietly, not to make a big show of it. But he does say to do so, and not to just sit quietly, doing nothing.
So let’s make this time of Lent a time of growth and reconciliation and help us to better celebrate both the coming of Easter and mostly what awaits us at the end of our lives. Let’s make this then a blessed Lent!
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