Ash Wednesday - a reflection

This post is offered to us by a reader of our blog who asks to remain anonymous.  

To write about this day is to confront it.  We are told in Ash Wednesday material

(Book of Common Prayer p. 265) that Lent is a time when those who "because of notorious sins, were separated from the body of the faithful" can be "reconciled by penitence and forgiveness."  Appointed psalms for today and this coming Sunday remind me of my sin.   "Blot out my transgressions," pleads the psalmist in Psalm 51.  "Wash me. . .purify me of my sin. . . .Against you alone have I sinned/and done what is evil in your sight."  I hear much of this psalm in the "Daily Devotions" section of the Book of Common Prayer (p. 137): "create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.   Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me."

 

My spiritual journey started over 20 years ago.   My professional life was going well, but my spiritual life was a mess.    Where I lived, the local Episcopal Church was very "high church" (as are many Midwestern parishes) and the parish encouraged the sacrament of confession as it appears in the Book of Common Prayer.   When my wife became very sick,  a colleague suggested that I ask Father R, the Episcopal priest, to come to the hospital for prayers. I did not at all consider myself a believer, but I did ask him, and I was surprised to be grateful for his prayers.

 

Later, I went to his office to talk.  I told him that I had been a militant atheist for all my adult life, and I had often poked fun at religious people.  At times I could be downright mean.   But I had heard much talk from evangelical Christians (not from my family!) and pre-Vatican II Catholics that many of us were bound for Hell, perhaps the majority of us.  I embraced atheism because I would be better off, I thought, if there were no God at all.  And I drank a lot for years to forget the whole thing.  "If there really is a God," I said to Father R, "I am going to be in big trouble."   He replied: "God is infinitely loving, infinitely forgiving, infinitely patient, and infinitely tenacious."   Thanks be to God for him and for those words!   Later at home that night I did not hear any words, but I felt like something was saying to me "glad to have you back."

 

A while later came Ash Wednesday.    I attended a very small service, received the imposition of ashes.  Communion followed.  I hesitated, the old skeptical part of me saying, "this is nuts."  But I felt drawn to the altar rail, almost by a kind of magnetic force.  I told my skeptical mind, "look -- something happened in Palestine about 2000 years ago that had to be very powerful.  Let's just go along here and see what happens."  Again at the rail, I had that "glad you're back" feeling.

 

Penitence came frequently, often suggested formally when I actually did confession as a sacrament.  At one time, it was suggested that I become an oblate with a Benedictine community, which I did with great pleasure.   Other acts of penitence were, I think, suggested by the Holy Spirit whom we beg for in that psalm.   One time I heard a call for volunteers to help with an AA meeting inside a prison.  I have been claustrophobic my whole life, and was a law-abiding citizen partly because the idea of being locked up terrified me.   Yet, that same magnetic force drove me to volunteer (as I walked up to offer my name, I thought, "I do NOT want to do this!").  My wife went with me to that prison meeting almost every week for three years, and as I look back I find it one of the most rewarding times of my life.  

 

Later, we moved to New Hampshire and I learned that there was a need for volunteer work in the Secure Psychiatric Unit at Concord State Prison.  I really did not want to go in there!  At the same time, I was getting to be depressed and irritable, and I decided I had better do that job too.  Pardon my language, but I later told a friend, "The Holy Spirit kicked my butt till I went in there."  I did that for a year, until the guys in my group were either discharged or moved to other facilities.

 

As I face Ash Wednesday for 2015, I recall more of the psalm, in the KJV: "purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean."  Well, I've been sort of clean, I guess, but I have a way of getting grubby again.   There's a lot more work to do, and this time of year is a great reminder to get going.

 

 

Anyone interested in sharing their own stories or reflections on the season may submit their work to office@stpaulsconcord.org  for consideration.  We appreciate and celebrate our community of believers, wherever they are in their personal journeys.