Ash Wednesday February 26 2 Corinthians 5:20 – 6:2 Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them. When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. As a classicist, every year when I receive ashes and am told that I am dust and to dust will return, I am reminded of a work by one of my favorite Roman poets, Horace’s Ode 4.7, wherein he expresses a similar thought: “We are dust and shadow.” But there are some important differences between his world and ours. In the Greco-Roman tradition the underworld was for most a gloomy place where the soul was only nourished by how much glory one had achieved in life, and it was specifically being remembered for doing great things that gave the dead this single small delight—doing great things without recognition apparently wasn’t enough. And yet the Greeks themselves fairly early on still questioned whether that pursuit of glory was worthwhile: when Odysseus meets the ghost of Achilles, Achilles famously says that in seeking glory rather than a happy and long life of peace, he had made the wrong choice, and even as a leader among the dead, he was unsatisfied. As Christians, we have a greater hope for the succeeding life; there we will be able to share in glory, and yet not ours, but God’s, having been saved by grace. Again, contrasting our religion with earlier Greek thought, the word that Paul uses for grace (“charis”) had a variety of meanings among non-Christian authors, but there was always for them the idea that grace was a quality we showed or acted with for the purpose of gaining something in return. But for us, grace is a thing given by God freely and undeservedly, and it’s what allows us to turn toward God. As Catholics, we nevertheless acknowledge the importance of the practice of good works. In today’s Gospel passage, Christ cautions that these works should still be done in secret (Matt. 6:4, 6, 18) so as not to augment our own glory (pace the Greeks), for even our good works emanate from the gift of grace. This Gospel reading advocating secrecy in our works-practice may seem strange for today in light of the ashes—one of the more public symbols of our faith—we receive, but I think they can be reconciled in that the ashes are not to signal our piety but to serve as yet another reminder of God’s glory, for without that grace—again freely and undeservedly given—we could not turn to God in reflection and repentance. Paul reminds us in today’s second reading not to receive God’s grace “in vain” (2 Cor. 6:1), and I think that’s an important reminder as we begin Lent that we need to cherish this gift, to allow ourselves in the Lenten season to be humble, to disconnect from some of the earthly things we mistakenly love, and to restore in our hearts a greater love of God. But being consistently good in our hearts and in our actions is a difficult thing. As humans, we cannot be perfect by definition (literally, perfection is completeness, i.e., a state where no improvement is possible), but sometimes the amount of my imperfection (or perceived imperfection) gnaws at me and makes me ashamed. Yet however much I’ve at times fallen away, I’ve always found peace in the Lenten opportunity for renewal, in my Lord taking me in my brokenness and restoring me. May you find that same peace in the power of God’s grace.
• Noah Stanzione World Languages, Latin Religion Department