Death and Spiritual Formation | Ash Wednesday Reflection

Beginning Lent with an Awareness of Our Temporal Nature

I remember getting off the phone after receiving news of my father’s cancer diagnosis. I involuntarily fell to my knees and began to weep.

Instantly, the ordering of what mattered most shifted.

The value of each moment increases a hundredfold, when we come to see they are in short supply.

In the oldest of Christian traditions, the season of Lent begins with such awareness.

Today, we are told, “You are dust, and to dust you will return.”

What a humbling reminder.
What an invitation to practice gratitude for every breath.
What a summons to hug tightly those we love the most.

Prayer. Fasting. Repentance. Turning our hearts back to God. Walking in the way of Jesus… We often see these as moral obligations (an aspiration to behave a certain way). They conjure up angst and motivation and determination…

What if instead we saw repentance as a gentle awareness of God’s nearness in every finite moment of the day? Isn’t this how Jesus lived?

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver