This week marks the beginning of Lent, the season before Easter where Christians practice self-denial in observance of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. The early church practiced fasting before Easter, but usually only for up to 3 straight days. Ash Wednesday, along with Holy Week services, tend to be my favorite because they ground me in my own mortality, my own limits, and my acceptance that God put that mortality and limit upon the divine in the person of Jesus. That self-denial teaches me what my self-denial actually looks like.
St. Basil the Great (4th c. Greek Bishop) has some profound words on self-denial as essential to Christian practice. Basil often teaches that the things we have are things we have been given so that we may give to others. Our disordered desires can be put in check by replacing them with ordered desires (such as exchanging lust for true compassion). In this way, self-denial isn’t pretending you’re someone you are not, but getting back to the root of who you really are.
“So then, let us flee (self-indulgence) as quickly as possible, lest we voluntarily choke ourselves to death. And so, if anyone baited in the past has either amassed a dust heap of riches for himself through acts of injustice and imprisoned his mind by worrying over them, or defiled his nature with the indelible filth of lasciviousness, or surfeited himself with other offense, let him, while there is still time, before he comes the final destruction, cast off the greater part of his burdens. Before his ship sinks, let him jettison the cargo he ought not have accumulated. Let him imitate those who work on the sea. For these men, even if they are transporting necessities on the ship, when a raging tempest arises from the sea and threatens to engulf the ship that is loaded down with cargo, as quickly as they can, they jettison most of what weighs them down and are unsparing in casting their merchandise into the sea. They do this to raise the ship above the waves and possibly give only their souls and the bodies a chance to escape from the danger.
Now it is surely far more appropriate for us rather than for them to think and act in this way. For they lose in an instant whatever they jettison and eventually fall into poverty by force of circumstance. But as for us, the more we jettison our wicked burdens, the more we shall accumulate even better riches for the soul. For fornication and all such things are utterly destroyed when they are jettisoned and are brought to non-existence when washed away by our tears. And then holiness and justice take their place, and being light things, they are not likely to be engulfed by any waves. And yet, when money is jettisoned in a good way, it is in fact not lost to those who have jettisoned it and flung overboard. Rather, as if transported to other, safer ships–the stomachs of the poor–it is saved, and its arrival in the safe harbor is anticipated, and it is kept for those who jettisoned it a an ornament, not a source of danger.
We have not been saved from death and judgment in order to engage in self indulgence, but only that we might live to serve and love others.
As a pastor who has the blessed opportunity of imposing ashes on the young and the old, it is really moving to say those words from Genesis 3:19, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Of course, a friend of mine was doing that last year when one of the older members of his congregation mentioned loud enough for all to hear, “Who’s ashes are these anyway? My husband’s were spread in the ocean, so they ain’t his!”
Lady, those ashes came from last year’s palm branches.
Special thanks to Father Ted’s blog for helping me discover this incredible quote.