Thursday, February 26, 2009

Remember That You Are But Dust

I saw the sign!!

No, seriously. I was wondering where the heck I was going to go for imposition of ashes, and on Shrove Tuesday, while I was walking to school to go get library books, I saw that little red-digital-sign (what are those things called anyway?) in front of Christ Church Cathedral telling me what time their service was. So anyone out there who’s ever doubted the efficacy of those sign thingies has now been proven wrong.

I love Ash Wednesday, which I guess is a little bit odd, since it’s a solemn day, the beginning of the longest forty (-six) days of the year. But I like the opportunity to give my faith-life a swift kick in the pants. For me, it’s a chance to get back on track, get back to God, get back to some serious, serious prayer. Normally, I would have gone to confession either in the morning or the day before – never good to start out Lent under a looming cloud of guilt and sin. But, as we have seen (yes, I know, I am a bit repetitive), the sacrament of reconciliation is currently problematic. Specifically, my access to it is restricted, so…yeah. Restricted, as in non-existent. The Lent-without-confession is a little jarring and disjointed.

I’d never been to the Cathedral before because it is intimidating. Church buildings scare me sometimes. Will I be struck by lightning? I’m not good enough to be here – everyone will know I don’t belong. How will I deal with the unknown location of things? Luckily, I coerced someone into going with me: *phew*. It was a lot smaller than I had imagined, somehow. No big giant echoing smallness.

I like that the sacramental ashes are made from the previous year’s palm leaves. It’s touching and important to recall that Jesus’ triumphal entry into the city was greeted with great joy, that was then proceeded, or course, by His crucifixion. That joy, too, was symbolically burned away by our own guilt, soon to become our reconciliation. Like that Opus Dei guy said, we each and every one of us daily crucify Jesus with our sins. But the admission of our guilt, and our belief in the Good News, is – through the ultimate and only Sacrifice – our gateway to salvation. I like how the origin of the ashes links the beginning of Lenten repentance to the joy of encountering Jesus entering the city, itself embedded in the narrative of His Passion, Resurrection and Ascension. The liturgical year in miniature, encapsulated in one day: the ever-flowing cycle of guilt, repentance, sorrow and joy, ever reminding me that at the end of the path there is Life, giving me the courage to follow it through to the end – as well as the knowledge that joy, too, will fade into the ordinary as I forget to keep my life centered fully on God, moving through the days imperfectly, and that the cycle of guilt, repentance, sorrow and joy will be the pattern of my imperfect, human life.

The Gospel reading from Matthew, of course, lambasts the hypocrite praying in the temple and bids us to pray in secret for our Father Who knows in secret, that He will give us our reward. I began to think about what that means in a world where we go around smudging ashes on our foreheads – a thinking process I was actually sort of coerced into.
Well, I thought about it. In one sense, it’s actually more pious-looking to hold back from doing it, since then you totally stand out. But that in itself is not so bad. It’s the question of public piety in general that is disturbing. We are, after all, a confessing Church. If it is hypocritical to be a minority people going out into the city streets with black crosses writing our Christianity on us, is it hypocritical that the martyrs gave their lives in witness to the faith? Undoubtedly, what they did as a minority stands out quite a bit more than ashes. Does this mean it is hypocritical piety to proclaim our identity as Christians, to wear crosses and religious medallions, to walk into a church? It is hard to understand what Jesus meant by hypocrisy.

Seen by others, loving to be seen by others, is a disposition of the heart, perceived only by God. Luke, I think makes it easier to understand, because his hypocrite’s prayer consists of giving thanks that he is not like the other sinners, predominantly because he fasts and gives alms. In this case, both the visible pieties and the glorification of the self are combined. Surely the problem is not that others see you, but that you do it to be seen; surely it is that your heart is self-satisfied, that you believe in self-justification instead of supplication, that your heart is storing up riches that will pass away. It is the heart that is ultimately the place where you pray in secret; the heart is the room with the closed door beyond which no person can see. The prayer of the heart, and the longings of the heart, its motivations and joys, are the secret known only to God, and therefore given to Him alone, and it is this prayer – this secret heart – that will, at the end, be made known.

I admit that I love being part of a tradition, that I love being among people experiencing the same rituals as I am. It reminds me that I am part of a family, an unbroken, unbreakable family gathered around the promise of Christ. I love the corporeality, the bodily feeling of ashes, sacramentals, peace, Sacraments. It makes me feel alive and connected and, sometimes, an almost unbearable swelling of love, the vulnerability of feeling that I have been opened up and joined together with the whole congregation of the saints. I love that we feel and touch and taste, that we kneel, face Eastward, sing and speak and praise. This is exactly what experiencing Christianity is for me, the reality that I can’t be a Christian by myself, without a community. Ah, Tradition! How I do (mostly) love thee!

Then, of course, there was the celebration of the Eucharist. Of course, I didn’t go up and receive. Foolish little girl, longing to run up, longing to be…complete. Fullfilled. Full to overflowing. When will God make me ready? When will I permit myself to be ready, prepared? I am afraid. I am a sinner, longing for forgiveness, and I am afraid. I hate being there and not receiving Eucharist – a relatively common occurrence for me even when I was still a Roman Catholic going to Roman Catholic churches. Nearness to tears, such sadness and despair, and yet constrained, held almost forcibly back, but with such pain, it is a feeling that is hard to describe and even harder to contain. It always, always hurts unbearably.

And I feel so alone.

1 comment:

  1. Anglican/Episcopal churches also offer confession (reconciliation), and other traditions might as well. Perhaps you can find a sympathetic priest in one of those traditions?

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