Ash Wednesday and a Lenten Experiment

Readings for Ash Wednesday:

Reading I: Jl 2:12-18
Responsorial Psalm: 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 14 and 17
Reading II: 2 Cor 5:20—6:2
Gospel: Mt 6:1-6, 16-18

"Even now, says the LORD,
return to me with your whole heart..." (from the first reading)

With my whole heart... That is a tall order. Has there ever been a time when I have served God "with my whole heart," without any kind of reservations? Can I truly say that my intentions at any given time were absolutely pure, without ulterior motive?

I am forced to ask myself whether I belong in the category of "hypocrites," in the sense in which Jesus invokes the term in the Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday. It may be worth our time to put this label into its historical context.
In all likelihood, Jesus is referring to certain members of the party of the Pharisees as "hypocrites" (although, you may notice, the term "Pharisee" nowhere appears in the reading). This is because the Pharisees were the leaders of a spiritual and religious renewal among the people of Israel. They appeared on a scene characterized by religious corruption and social and political unrest. During a time when the sacrificial cult of Israel had grown decadent, the Pharisees spearheaded an effort to revitalize the religion of Israel through a retrieval of traditional Jewish practices. They became, for all intents and purposes, the pastors of the people because they had earned for themselves a reputation for holiness and erudition. They were precisely the ones you would expect to find praying, fasting, and giving alms.

And it was men of this class, men from whom all expected high standards of holiness, whom Jesus accused of being "hypocrites," play-actors. This is a jarring statement, and it contains a powerful lesson. We human beings, even the most holy among us, are capable of transforming sacred and life-giving activities into their opposite. The spirit in which we act is at least as important as the objective goodness of the act itself. It's hard to resist citing First Corinthians here: "If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing."

I want to begin this Lent by being honest about my own intentions, the spirit in which I am prone to act. I suffer from, and practice, a variety of vices. (Comparing the date of this post with that of Ash Wednesday, sloth comes to mind.) But one of the most deep-seated attitudes that seems to color almost everything I do is my desire to please people and to avoid conflict. While I do have good moments, and there are times in which I endeavor to witness the Gospel of life in what I say as well as how I say it, I am ashamed to say that in the majority of my interactions, my deeds and words are slanted by my conscious and unconscious efforts to keep people from thinking ill of me. I find myself bound, tied down to this fear of making people upset; I am thereby prevented from witnessing to what I believe, from risking the criticism of others, and from engaging in an honest and fearless pursuit of truth. Though I would like to think I speak the truth in love, all too often I find myself practicing false irenicism instead, which is neither truth (it exchanges the truth for what seems to placate the other person) nor even loving (for I deny the other person my own insights and thus fail to treat her or him with dignity, as a fellow searcher for truth).

Because of this, it is fitting, as far as I am concerned, that we should be launching a blog at the beginning of the Lenten season. Our mission here at Catholic Labs dovetails with some personal goals of mine for this Lent: victory over ignorance and error, and the intellectual courage to seek this victory regardless of its possible effects on my pride or on the opinions of others.

I could not achieve these goals on my own. So I would like to close this entry, my first of many (God willing), on a note of gratitude to those on whom I rely: to James the Hype, my friend and colleague, who continues to challenge me to be an authentic follower of Christ; to those who contribute to these humble experiments, either by joining the conversation or simply by reading and reflecting; and to the One whose abundant grace has been and continues to be "sufficient for me". And so, praying for victory over the reign of sin in my members, particularly over my own special brand of hypocrisy, I join my prayers with that of the Psalmist:

"A clean heart create for me, O God,
and a steadfast spirit renew within me."