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Ash Wednesday 2025

After the joyous frivolity of 💛 Mardi ⚜️ Gras 💚 and the calories of Fastnacht 🍩 Day, 🕂 Ash Wednesday 🕂 marks the turn into a new liturgical season of reflection, renunciation and repentance.

🕂 Lent 🕂

And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. ~Gospel of Luke, Chapter 4, Verses 1-2

Heck, I have a hard time not eating for forty minutes.

The thing about Lent is that it is meant to be a time of serious reflection and renouncing things that distract us from our walk with God.

Some people mark the season by giving up a favorite treat or common indulgence.

Alcohol, chocolates, whatever you choose to set aside for 40 days is pretty much a token gesture in comparison to wandering the wastes of the Middle East.

Granted, we’re not preparing to be crucified.

That’s already done and over with. The reason there is a Christian religion is because the culmination of Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness is long done and over with.

For us, it is a liturgical season. It is a time to either prepare or to celebrate.

Prepare for what? To celebrate.

Celebrate what? What we prepared for.

The liturgical calendar is circular.

Preparing in solemnity to be ready to really celebrate a world-changing miracle is the purpose of both Advent and Lent.

After setting yourself aside for a while and focusing on the miracle at hand, there comes a time at Christmas and Easter to celebrate.

Celebrating the fulfillment of prophecy, the presence of God in the world and the fellowship of the church family brings a whole gift bag or basket full of miracles.

The circular nature of the religious observance is a reflection of God’s creation. Our world spins around on its axis. It revolves around the sun. ‘Round and ’round it goes.

As goes creation, so goes the Creator. We get a sign or prophecy. It comes to pass. We get another sign or prophecy. It comes to pass. Ever the circle turns.

That being said, there are 295 days until Christmas. Does that seem out of sequence? Not so. Without Christmas, there can be no Easter.

Jesus had to be born in order to die. Both miracles matter. The point of Advent and Lent is to remind us of the importance of each, not as an extended shopping season.

Anointed With Ash

What is Ash Wednesday all about? Lent Explained

A bit more on the cyclical nature of the liturgical calendar. The ashes of Ash Wednesday are made by burning the palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday.

The end of one Lent facilitates the beginning of the next. The world continues ’round and ’round and we celebrate these seasons of remembrance.

The problem with things that are this regular is that it can lull you into a performative stupor. You ride the current and go through the motions.

That’s fine sometimes. There are times when it’s all too much and you want to just sit back and ride the carousel. There is a time for every purpose under heaven.

However, when it becomes habitual or when it overtakes your entire experience, it becomes a problem. If it doesn’t move you, it doesn’t matter.

You have to be willing to engage in the experience from time to time. Preferably more often than not, but even one or two poignant experiences in one’s life are better than none at all.

Commitment Grown Dull

Lent is a call to renew a commitment grown dull, perhaps, by a life more marked by routine than by reflection. ~Sister Joan Chittister

A while back, life was oriented around the Liturgy of the Hours. In addition to the liturgical seasons of Advent, Christmas, Ordinary Time, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost and Ordinary Time (again), there were the canonical hours of Matins, Lauds, Prime (not Amazon), Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline.

We weren’t hustling around to jobs, side hustles, activities for the kids, Prime Time TV or anything of the sort. Life was slower and marked by church bells to denote prayer times.

Our industrialized society boiled it all down to the nanosecond. Efficiency experts can wring more out of five minutes than our forebears did all day.

That’s probably why stress conditions and heart attacks are so much more prevalent.

If you believe the more utopian theorists on the coming age of AGI or ASI, we may find ourselves back in a more contemplative time.

With machines doing the stuff that stresses us out, we will (in theory) have more freedom to become human beings instead of human doings for the first time in over a century.

Maybe so. Could be nice. By the same token, it is aptly observed that idle hands do the devil’s work.

We may not need to participate in the dreaded professional grind, but we ought to figure something beneficial to take its place.

For me, that’s writing. I can’t not do it. Any other job I’ve ever had, I have no regrets about no longer doing them. I literally don’t care to the point that it might well never have happened.

All the more so when a lot of what I ever did is almost certainly either archived somewhere or has simply been deleted and forgotten.

Sadly, my books will eventually be forgotten, but if they are archived, there is some chance that someone could find them again and enjoy them some day.

So much of what we do is completely pointless. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a dance of an ant hill with little more meaning that shuffling crumbs around.

Sometimes, even in the minute, what we do is absolutely pointless and more’s the pity. If you can see it’s pointless, you ought to stop and do something productive.

But the circle circulates and busy-ness comes around and goes around. You have to wonder if it’s worse to notice and be frustrated by it or to give in to it and simply be dragged along in a pointless parade.

That’s what the liturgical seasons are supposed to be for. Advent gets you to Christmas. Lent gets you to Easter. You prepare. You celebrate. You repeat.

The difference is that if you are engaged in the liturgical seasons, you get a glimpse of something eternal and sublime. If you are engaged in the busywork, you might get a glimpse of the doctor’s office or the hospital because you’ve stressed yourself half to death.