Ash Wednesday: Promise, Hope, Pain & Forgiveness
By Matthew Sottile, Editor
Ash Wednesday. How quickly Lent arrived; we spend today reflecting, trying to find balance between the sorrows and joys of the season. In doing so, it is important to examine our own souls, behavior and spirit. The moment of examination focuses heavily on the last hours of Jesus’s life, filled with promise, hope, pain and forgiveness. As we place ashes on our foreheads, we too must inherit and embody these traits, wearing them throughout the day.
One of our new spring titles, Fr. Thomas Rosica’s Stay with Us: Encounters with the Risen Lord, echoes similar sentiments. In a review of the book, Donald Senior, C.P., says:
“The very heart of Christian faith is the conviction that through Jesus Christ, the power of God’s love has defeated death and brought new life to our world. The dynamic reflection on resurrection found in Stay with us breathes the living spirit of the Gospels themselves: vivid, powerful, inspiring. Here is an informed and illuminating probe into the diverse beauty of the gospel accounts and their meaning for our Christian life and mission today.”
Ash Wednesday, and the Lenten season, is just that: the power of God’s love defeating death and bringing a new life to our world. Hope. Promise. Pain. Forgiveness. It inspires us to better ourselves, spiritually, and to help those around us. To reflect on what it means to repent, to pray, to give thanks.
Let us achieve this together, through these next 40 days. Let us find courage; to find God in prayer as He defeated death and brought new life to us all.
