Bishop Wester calls Utah Catholics to self-examination and penitence

Intermountain Catholic

Photo 1 of 2

Fred and Dorothy Herrera and their grandson, Alex, return to their pew after receiving ashes from Bishop John C. Wester.

Following is the text of the homily by Most Rev. John C. Wester, Bishop of Salt Lake City, on Ash Wednesday, 2011 at the Cathedral of the Madeleine, Salt Lake City.

Today, Ash Wednesday, is a beautiful, beautiful day for us to begin this Lenten retreat together. I welcome you all to our beautiful Cathedral this afternoon.

As we listened prayerfully to the readings today, I noticed that, at first blush, there seem to be some interesting contradictions. For example, our lector read so beautifully for us, proclaiming God’s word, that today is an acceptable time, and that today is the day of salvation. And in a few moments, at the preface of today’s Mass, we will refer to Lent as a "joyful" season. Well, these are words talking about great joy and yet I see here at the table the ashes, and we’re dressed in purple, and we’re not using the Gloria, nor the Alleluia, and we’ve come into a very penitential time of our liturgical year.

So, what gives? Why the contradiction?

The heart of the matter is this: Truly this is an acceptable time. This is the day of salvation. This is a joyful season. We are beginning not just the Lenten retreat, but we are beginning what I like to say is 90 days of Easter celebration. So we have 40 days of Lent and 50 days of Easter – a 90-day celebration. You might look upon Easter, as I like to say every year, as a diamond. And a diamond has facets; it has little faces on it. Every facet is an aspect of the one diamond. Easter is the diamond. Beginning today and ending on Pentecost Sunday, we celebrate different facets of this central mystery of our faith, Christ’s resurrection. Today we celebrate the facet of Ash Wednesday and we are beginning the facet of 40 days of Lent. And of course we’ll celebrate Passion Sunday, or Palm Sunday as it’s sometimes called; and Holy Thursday and Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter, the Ascension, Pentecost – these are all celebrations of the great feast of Easter. (Actually, more than 50 days because every Sunday is a celebration of Easter). What we’re celebrating is Easter, and that’s why it’s joyful, because this is our salvation. This is eternal life. Jesus died for us and rose again on the third day, and so our celebration is one of Easter, of joy.

Now, this is not to say that we don’t look at the facet of Lent and realize that part of Easter is the cross; that Jesus died for us, that we get to Easter through the cross. You and I get to Easter celebration through our crosses. That’s why we have the penitential part. Our Gospel today emphasizes three ways of carrying our cross throughout Lent: prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.

We pray as a sign of our dependency on God. I say, ‘God, I am just a simple human being, filled with sin and imperfection. I need you, Lord. I come into your holy presence and I bow to you, and I adore you.’

This is the penitence part, because I like to be the head of everything. I like to be the center of attention. So it’s difficult for me to say, ‘Lord, I adore you. Not me. You.’ That’s where the cross comes in. In my prayer, I have to do penance, I have to remind myself of my humility, my neediness, my dependency.

And I give alms not because I think I’m so good, but because I’m poor. I give alms to remind myself of my own poverty; I’m just giving to one of my own – to my fellow sister or brother who is poor with me. Again, that’s difficult. That’s a cross to bear, to acknowledge my poverty.

And I fast, or do good works, as a sign, again, of my own neediness, my hunger and my thirst for God that only God can fulfill.

So anything that I do should direct me to the cross, not to me. If I give up candy for Lent, I do it not to say, ‘Oh, look how good I am. I gave up Hershey bars.’ I do it as a reminder that I hunger for the living God, and it points me to the crucifix.

If I’m going to give up candy and it’s going to make me feel proud and really good about myself, then I should not do it. Rather, I should eat all the candy I want, and maybe the stomachache will remind me of the cross! And that would be a good thing, because it’s the cross that will lead me to Easter. For, when I join my sufferings to those of Christ and live out my baptismal call to be one with Christ in his sufferings, then I will also be one with Christ, who reigns now at the right hand of the Father in Heaven. My sufferings will draw me closer to the living Lord with whom I will be one forever in Heaven. My sufferings open up a place within me for Christ to fill with his grace, a grace that leads to everlasting life.

No matter what it is that we do, we do it because of God’s grace, because God is working in us, moving us with his Son through the cross to Easter. Lent is a time to look at the cross because we can only get to Easter through the cross. My prayer for our diocese this year is that we will carry our crosses throughout Lent in such a way that we all meet again at the altar of the Lord this Easter to celebrate the gift of eternal life won for us by our Lord and Savior, whose cross is the gateway to heaven!