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Showing posts from February, 2020

Ash Wednesday

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This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, time to prepare! The ashes we use are the burnt palms from last year's celebration of Passion Sunday. We begin our Lenten journey aware of where we are going. We want to enter into the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus for us more fully. That is the purpose of our journey. It is why we mark our heads with his cross. It is why we fast today and abstain from meat. Our Lenten program is not an effort to save ourselves. We have been saved by his sacrifice. Our self-denial helps us, in the darkness that surrounds us, to prepare ourselves to receive his light. For this is a journey to the Easter font, where we will renew the promises of our Baptism, remembering that in dying with him in the waters of Baptism, we are re-born with him to everlasting life. This year's Lenten journey begins!

Living Lent like Cinderella!

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The story of Cinderella is one of the most treasured fairytales of all time. It has been retold many times and has made generations of young girls say, “I want to be a princess when I grow up.” However, do we think of this story as a way to live the Lenten journey? We go back to the beginning of the Grimm’s fairytale and read: “In the evening when she had worked herself weary, there was no bed for her. Instead she had to sleep by the hearth in the ashes. And because she always looked dusty and dirty, they called her Cinderella.” Yes, Cinderella of the Ashes! The Bible has a number of references about ashes. Dust and ashes are also synonyms of the word earth (adamah). From this word are derived ‘Adam’ and the Hebrew word for ‘man’.  Genesis 3:19 even makes a play on these words with: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return," a sentence which is echoed in the Ash Wednesday service. Another reference comes in Genesis 18:27. Here Abraham is bargaining wit