Holy Week
I am grateful for the season. I don't look forward to it but I'm grateful for it just the same. Lent is the time of desert in which God, in a sign of contradiction, waters his flock. And it’s only when I get to Ash Wednesday that I realize how much I need Ash Wednesday: “Remember thou art dust and to dust you shall return” puts everything in much needed perspective. The need for penitence sometimes seems a lagging indicator; Lent reminds me that I need to repent for my lack of pentitential spirit.
Perhaps the reason so many line up and get their ashes with such enthusiasm is that in recalling the shortness of life it tends to make the trivial seem, well, trivial. In that clarity there is a palpable sense of the truth of "my yoke is easy, my burden light."
I do feel nonplussed that I couldn’t fast more effectively, with more discipline, especially on Monday and Tuesday of the past week which was for worthy cause of peace in Iraq. I felt great relief on Wednesday more because my guilt was over rather than my hunger. Skipping a fourth meal of the day – cereal – seemed trial enough, sadly. There is rarely a clean feeling of victory in Lent which, I suppose, is part of the cross of Lent.
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