Homily by Father Emmanuel Schwab

Ash Wednesday – Year B

1st reading: Joel 2, 12-18

Psalm: 50, 3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 14.17

2rd reading: 2 Corinthians 5, 20 – 6, 2

Gospel: Matthew 6,1-6.16-18

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Saint Teresa doesn't talk much about Lent.

She mentions it in a letter to her sister Léonie (LT 175) and I summarize: she speaks of Lent as symbolic of this “land of exile”, and of Easter as symbolic of the “Homeland of Heaven” towards which we let's walk. This whole, land of exile and Homeland of Heaven, or rather this couple land of exile – Homeland of Heaven, truly inhabits Thérèse's heart.

Very early on, she receives as a grace, one could say, nostalgia for Heaven: she desires this Heaven, this “beautiful Sky” (sic); this is what she wishes in her wishes, for example: to share the “beautiful Sky” (Cf. LT 072 to Louis Martin). And as much as Thérèse loves life and finds it magnificent, this life, this situation of exile on earth weighs on her.

It seems interesting to me to shed light on the process of Lent with this background of exile. We easily forget Heaven. We easily lose sight of the goal we are walking toward. We are sometimes like the mountaineer who wants to reach the summit of Everest, but who loses sight of the summit and gets lost in the first slopes of the mountain. Today it is about putting before our eyes this “beautiful Heaven”, this Kingdom of Heaven, this Kingdom of God – we find both expressions in the Gospel – which Jesus never ceases to announce and towards which we we lead. But we must realize that we are not there yet. And we must accept the pain of not being there yet.

We cannot truly desire something that is to come without feeling the lack of it. If we do not feel the lack of the beautiful Sky, it is because we are missing out on something. And we could say that the time of Lent is there to make this lack reappear in our lives.

We are not yet at the end of the road!

Of course, the end of the journey, this Kingdom is entirely present in Jesus. And this is why Jesus is so central in our existence, and why for Thérèse, her whole life is to love Jesus and to make him loved; and to contemplate his suffering face, he who bears our sins.

We have the temptation to mask this lack, this desire for Heaven by seeking very short-term satisfaction in food, in leisure, in games, in I don't know what else... The penance of Lent is to decide to give up these short-term satisfactions, to be able to allow the true desire that inhabits us to emerge and appear, which is the desire to see God, which is the desire for life in fullness, which is the desire for Heaven. If Lenten penance does not have this as its goal, then we are missing something. We need to dig into this desire.

What we heard in the prophet Joel, where the Lord calls us to return to him with all our hearts, is this... Return to God, desire his presence, desire his Kingdom, desire to live this fullness of life which is in God.

As we seek to return to God, we measure how sin works in our lives. And there is also in this Lent to let our sin appear. Let yourself be reconciled with God, the apostle tells us, allow yourselves to be reconciled so as to know from this exile the joy of living with God. And our sin is not what bothers us: our sin is what bothers God, if I may use the expression. I mean that it is the word of God which can reveal our sin to us, it can also be the word of our brothers which mediates the word of God. But our subjectivity alone cannot be enough to reveal what sin really is in our lives. We must ask God for grace, to show us our sin, to show us what he wants to reform in us, since God wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

Desiring heaven, realizing that we are not there yet, that we are only on the way and that we are not at the end of the journey, this is what should inspire us in acts of penance, of renunciation. , which we must pose in this Lent. What will best help us turn more to the Lord? What will best help us find time to meditate on the word of God, meditate on the Bible, the Holy Scriptures, taking the time to sit down, to open our Bible? What are the renunciations that will help us to be more attentive to our neighbors, to deploy more charity in our families, in our workplaces, where we live?

The goal of Lent is not to burden our lives with this or that rule: on the contrary, the goal is to free ourselves from everything that hinders us, and in particular, says the letter to the Hebrews, of the sin that hinders us so well. The three dimensions suggested to us in the Gospel, almsgiving, prayer and fasting tell us

  • how, through almsgiving, it is a question of deploying our charity towards our neighbor.
  • how through prayer it is a matter of deploying our charity towards God, taking more time to listen to him and letting him touch us internally in prayer, and fasting tells us what we must give up to let our heart be filled with the grace of God.

Let us enter resolutely, brothers and sisters, into this beautiful time of Lent.

It is not we who decide to enter Lent, it is God who calls us to do so through his Church. And if God calls us to experience something, it is because he wants to give us something.

Let us welcome his grace and offer ourselves resolutely, day after day, in perseverance to truly know the joy of Heaven.

Amen