Ash Wednesday reflection

I had a few people ask, so here's the reflection I gave at our Ash Wednesday prayer service last night on campus... 

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Why do you go to church on Ash Wednesday?

Take a second to think about it.

I think some of us would answer with varying degrees of “Because I’m supposed to.” Either your family told you you’re supposed to, the Church told you you’re supposed to, or you feel obligated to be here because of your faith. But what’s the real reason why we’re here? What’s the real reason we’ll leave here tonight with ashes on our foreheads for everyone to see?

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, media relations director of the USCCB, blogs for the Washington Post and I think she describes it best. "We can feel a little funny with ashes on our foreheads, but for Catholics, that’s how we mark the start of Lent. Ashes don’t say we’re holy. They say we’re sinners. They don’t say we’re perfect, only that we’re willing to try. They don’t say we’re models of religiosity, but they do say we belong. In today’s world of loners and isolates, that says a lot."

We hear a lot about three of the pillars of the Church that Lent focuses on - prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We know that we should pray every day, not eat meat on Fridays, and give to the poor. But each of these things are about much more than that surface definition. One of the devotionals we have to give you all tonight has a quote that I love – “Our culture models us for self-indulgence. We eat and drink more than we need; we think our wants are needs; we fail to distinguish between what is essential and what is unnecessary. By paring back, space is created for the invasion of grace." 

Lent is a time where we are challenged to go be uncomfortable, to make space for the invasion of grace, to be better Christians than the people that we are every day. I don’t mean uncomfortable in the sense of your butt falling asleep in these plastic chairs. I mean uncomfortable in the way that it makes us feel when we really think about how much God has done for us, and how little we have done for Him in comparison.

That thought shouldn’t necessarily make us feel like awful people – but it should challenge us to see how much more we can do for God, our Church, and our faith, especially over the next 40 days. It should challenge you to not only pray every day, but get to Mass every Sunday and Holy Day, and pay attention -- try to really get something out of it while you’re there. It should challenge us to fast from meat on Fridays, and also fast from the things that hurt your soul that we do every day – like gossip, lie, get jealous, or have lustful thoughts. It should challenge us to not only give a few extra dollars to some charity or the collection basket, but also to give our time, or whatever gifts or skills we have to offer, to a worthy cause.

Lent is a challenge to really focus on building a stronger relationship with God. Not because He wants us to do certain things during Lent and check them off our list of things to do -- He wants to build a stronger relationship with you this Lent because He loves you. He loves YOU.

Don't have a relationship with God? Wish you had a stronger faith in God to get you through this crazy time of your life? This is the place to start. Do something these next few weeks to change your perspective, and deepen your faith in God. There are so many retreat opportunities, chances to get to Mass, to go to a Bible study, a Newman Club meeting, a service project, a men’s or women’s group, etc. that there's really no excuse to NOT do something to grow closer to God this Lent. Think your schedule is really too busy to fit anything in, or can’t find anything you’re interested in? Come talk to me, and I will do everything I can to find an opportunity that works for you, it’s my full time job to make opportunities for you guys to grow in your faith.

A lot of people picture Lent as a sad time of the year where priests wear purple, we sing mopey songs about forgiveness and Jesus dying at church, and when it's over we get rewarded with chocolate bunnies and Peeps.

But let’s be real -- the son of God didn't die for us so we could eat chocolate bunnies. I totally understand how when you're in college, or working, or taking over campus via 19 clubs, it's easy to go through the motions of your faith, put everything else before your relationship with God, and just coast. But God didn't make us so that we could coast through life. He made us so that we could love, and be loved by Him. He made us in His image, so that we could at least have a shot at trying to live our lives like He did, and be full of compassion, mercy, and selfless service to others.

Living like Jesus did is hard though, especially if you're weighed down by things like stress with school, pressure to be successful, wanting to be in a loving relationship. Things like depression, loneliness, suicidal thoughts, lustful feelings, being used or abused, feeling unwanted or alone. But God didn't create just one person, to live alone. He made billions of us - because we are meant to be a part of a community.

That's a big part of why it's so important for us to get to Church. It's easy to say that you're a Christian and you live out these ideals and read the Bible. It's another thing to actually do it. We weren't given this daunting task of living like Christ so that we could go at it alone and fail miserably. We're supposed to do it together so that we can succeed at living that way. It's why programs like Alcoholics Anonymous are successful at getting people back on their feet - because people in AA don't do it alone. They don’t give alcoholics a book and say, “Here, figure it out on your own and have fun!” We might not be alcoholics, but we are all sinners to some degree or another. No one is perfect. We need that support.

Being a part of a community of college students that are trying to live a Christian life is crucial to you growing in your faith. I totally speak from experience when I say that without the people that supported me when I was in college, my faith would be in the toilet right now. We need people around us that understand exactly what we’re going through, because they’re in the same boat. We need that accountability check, a friend to tell us that we're heading in the wrong direction when we might not be paying attention to what's going on around us. We need that reminder every Sunday that someone loved each one of us enough to die for us. We need to know that we have a purpose. We are wanted. Someone has a plan for us, and He wants us to be successful in achieving our goals. We are loved, we are not alone, and we are forgiven.

There's an awesome song that's recently come out in the Christian music scene - which, by the way, if you've never heard of Christian rock music, Google it, turn on the radio, or stop by the Campus Ministry office and borrow a CD or two – it’s called Who You Are, by a band called Unspoken. The basic message is in the chorus – “You can never fall too hard, so fast, so far that you can’t get back when you’re lost, where you are is never too late, so bad, so much that you can’t change who you are. You can change who you are.”

We wear ashes on our foreheads as a reminder that we are sinners, but like those lyrics say, we’ve been forgiven, we can change the direction we’ve been going in, we can lay all the crazy things going on in our lives down and turn to God. We celebrate Lent as a reminder that we love God, He loves us, and we are not perfect. But we can try, and that says a lot. We can make changes in our lives and step it up, grow closer to God, get involved in our faith, pray more, give more, be more aware of God in our lives. Ash Wednesday is like a reality check – don’t miss it. Don’t miss it. Take some time to really think about what God wants you to do to have a stronger relationship with Him, and don’t try to do it alone. God loves you too much to make you try and live like Christ all by yourself. 

"Who You Are" -- Unspoken 

 

Life lessons from God, through my dog's eyes

Meet Bailey.

Cute, right? I think she might be the most adorable Goldendoodle puppy in the world. Not like I'm biased or anything.

Bailey is currently 5 months old. In puppy land, that's almost equivalent to the "terrible two's" of children - old enough to know the basics of what you should and shouldn't do, but not totally able to physically stop herself from chewing on your shoe while she looks at you with those adorable puppy eyes, saying "You love me, right?"

I mean, how can anything that sleeps like this wreak havoc on your house between approximately 9-10 p.m. daily? We affectionately call this time of day puppy zoomie time. If you've ever seen a dog go crazy over nothing, you know what the zoomies are - running in circles with no destination, with a crazy look in their eyes, running into furniture and barking at nothing, because they just have so much ENERGY and don't know how to handle it. But when the zoomies have passed, we go out for her last walk of the night. Bailey loves being outside, but she doesn't love the dark. We had her for at least 6 weeks before we could get her to cross the road and walk out of sight of the house, and you'd think that our safe suburban cul-de-sec was crawling with the aliens from Signs with how she spooks when the neighbors take their garbage out. Even though it's easy to get irritated with her when she's trying to nip the backs of your knees while you walk, trying to get you to play, it's impossible to be mad when wants you to protect her from the evil trash cans every Tuesday night. 

Sometimes Bailey's relationship with me reminds me of my relationship with God. I am thankfully more potty trained than Bailey, but in God's eyes, I'm still a young'un with a lot to learn. As a human, I tend to make mistakes, and sometimes do things that I know are bad, without realizing until after the fact that I even did them. I'm not fully "trained" yet - and I think that my "training" to follow God's will for me will be something I'll be working on for the rest of my life. But even so, God still loves me, in his always-and-forever, perfect, selfless loving way that only He can do; He protects me when I'm scared, feeds my soul, and shows me how to love.

 With puppies, like so many things, patience is a virtue, and a struggle. Bailey's current favorite toy is a stuffed hippo (well, it's supposed to be a hippo... it looks more like a worm) with not one, but two squeakers in it. Now that her mouth is big enough, she's been blessed with the talent of making both of them squeak at once, the sound of which is probably equivalent to a dying duck jumping on a small accordion. When you sit down on the couch after a long day and the first thing that lands in your lap is that hippo toy, it's hard to be patient. But I try to be patient with her, out of love, like God is patient with me when he's trying to teach me a lesson or get me to focus on something. And in turn, she is (relatively) patient with me when I make her wear a little something festive.

Bailey is happy with the basics. She's perfectly content with her kibble, water, and the occasional ice cube or bacon-flavored treat. Despite the 26374846 dog toys that are always strewn all over the floor, she's happy with just her hippo toy, a bone, and one of my dad's old golf towels (we're still not sure why it's so appealing to her, but whatever works). She has more fun snuggling with her family or playing catch with you than chewing on a toy alone in the corner - unlike what many of us tend to do when we watch TV by ourselves or sit around playing video games instead of board games with our family. For dogs, life is simple, it's not based on success or how much cool stuff you have -- it's about being around the people you love, being joyful, and enjoying the little things, like feeling the wind in your hair or getting to say hi to a neighbor.

But God isn't always the owner, and we're not always the puppy - sometimes it's the other way around.

Puppies are so joyful. When there's leaves on the ground and the wind is blowing them around the yard, Bailey is just as happy chasing them in circles as she would be if she won the lottery and got paid in bacon. I wish it was that easy for people to feel and express that kind of joy, especially over the simple things. Sure, she looks a little silly standing at the end of the driveway with her eyes closed and the wind blowing through her shaggy fur (picture the Titanic scene at the front of the boat, but with dogs) - but you can tell she's happy just being in that moment and appreciating God's gift of nature. In her own way, she's teaching me to pay more attention to the world and be thankful for the little blessings that we get every day, or life's small accomplishments (like finding the perfect puppy-sized hiding spot on our kitchen's cookbook shelf). God tries to teach us to be more joyful in these little things too

Bailey is forgiving, and loyal. Some people think that dogs are like this because they're "stupid" or have short attention spans (these people have never witnessed a puppy manage to find a way through the bars on a baby gate). But dog owners know that they are like this because of their ability to love unconditionally. Yes, it hurts them when you accidentally step on their tail, but they don't run and hide in the corner for the rest of the day if it happens - they keep loving you anyway. God's love for us is like that, and so, so much more. He wants to be close to you, for you to love Him back, to be your best friend, and to show you joy in the world. Let Him.