Ash Wednesday

“Return to me”, the Lord is telling us on the first reading of today’s Mass. It means that we have been wandering off, we have lost our direction and we need to stop and come back. We have been going rather in the opposite direction, towards our own ego, our selfishness and our pride. Return to me, turn around, do a “u” turn. It is hard to do it; it demands a small conversion, to recognise that we have been wrong and we need to put God back at the centre of our lives. Return “to me”, abandon the desires of your heart, that don’t make you happy, and return to your God, to your Creator, your Father, to what constitutes the meaning of your life.

When the priest today places the ashes on our forehead, he will remind us of the famous words of the Scripture: “Remember man that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” It is a reminder that without God we are nothing; without God all that remains is this pile of dirt that we see in this little dish. The wind is going to blow away the dust of our bodies. We shall return to the earth where we came from. We get the ashes on our forehead, to make sure our thoughts are in the right place. The Church wants to inscribe on our minds what it is important in life. Memento mori. Remember, we come from God and we are going back to him.

In the book The Alchemist the boy asks him: “Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” And the old man answers: “Because, wherever our heart is, there is also our treasure.” Ubi thesaurus cor; your heart is in your treasure. If we want to know what our treasure is, we should listen to the beating of our hearts. It is not familiar music, because we don’t normally listen to it. It is normally hidden from our senses. We need to listen carefully. Pope Francis says that “our heart always points in some direction: it is like a compass seeking its bearings. We can also compare it to a magnet: it needs to attach itself to something.” It is always seeking something and it is good for us to know what it is.

Pope Francis in one of his homilies for Ash Wednesday, proposes three steps for Lent: “Almsgiving, prayer, fasting. What are they for? Almsgiving, prayer and fasting bring us back to the three realities that do not fade away. Prayer reunites us to God; charity, to our neighbour; fasting, to ourselves. God, my neighbour, my life: these are the realities that do not fade away and in which we must invest. Lent, therefore, invites us to focus, first of all on the Almighty, in prayer, which frees us from that horizontal and mundane life where we find time for self but forget God. It then invites us to focus on others, with the charity that frees us from the vanity of acquiring and of thinking that things are only good if they are good for me. Finally, Lent invites us to look inside our hearts, with fasting, which frees us from attachment to things and from the worldliness that numbs the heart. Prayer, charity, fasting: three investments for a treasure that endures.”

In this journey through Lent, where do we fix our eyes, our gaze? What should we focus on? The Church has the answer: on Christ crucified. It is very simple: Jesus is on the cross and if we want to find him, we need to climb up to the cross.

josephpich@gmail.com

Yes meansYes

“Let your Yes mean Yes, and your No mean No.” This was the motto of a boys’ school, to teach the kids to be sincere. They used to ask me, why do we have to say the truth, if with a lie we can get away with things. I used to tell them that Jesus is the Truth and if we want to be closer to Jesus, we need to be truthful. Let what you say reflect what you think. Let your mind express itself. Gulliver in one of his travels comes across an island populated by horses, and tries to explain to them what human beings are. The horses cannot understand creatures that are able to lie: How can they think one thing and say a different one? Scientists say that the difference between computers and human beings is that computers cannot lie; they are programmed to come out with what is right. The day they learn how to deceive others, they will be like us; then we will be in trouble, completely at their mercy.

Society needs the truth to function properly. We live in a relativistic world where people are not interested in the truth. They are only interested in their truth. As long as I am happy in the way I live, I change the truth to suit my life. The internet is full of fake news. We like to access web sites that say things we agree with. The protagonist of the movie “A Few Good Men” has a famous line: “You cannot handle the truth”. It is true: we don’t want to handle it, to live by it, to live our lives according to the Truth, with a capital T. Martyrs used to lay down their lives for what they believed in. We are not ready to do so. We are only ready to die for what give us most pleasure, money, drugs, sex, alcohol or food.

First we need to be sincere with God. It is silly to try to deceive God, because He knows everything. But we don’t want to face him, to acknowledge his presence. We live ignoring him, as if he doesn’t exist; we only go to Him when we are in trouble. How can we love Him if we are afraid of him? Maybe we contact Him once a day, out of duty, just in case, when we pray before going to bed. We need to force ourselves to spend time with Him in silent prayer, to try to see things through His eyes, to look at Him with loving eyes. Somebody said that we should look at Jesus’ eyes at least once a day. Sooner or later we are going to face Him.

In the temple of Apollo at Delphi there was a famous inscription: Nosce te ipsum; know yourself. One of the most difficult things in life is to know ourselves. Because we live inside of ourselves, because we don’t like how we are, we create a different image of ourselves. I’d like to have another inscription: Ama te ipsum: love yourself; love yourself in the way God created you. God doesn’t love a virtual you; he loves you in the way you are. Unless we accept ourselves in the way we are we cannot be sincere with ourselves. How can we love ourselves? How can we get to know ourselves? Open your interior to somebody you love, to somebody who can help you, like in spiritual direction; we all need a sounding board to check who we are and how we are.

Lastly, sincerity with others. It is very important in human relations. If people know that we are not sincere, they cannot trust us. It is not easy to live with a person who is constantly lying to you. Once we start lying, it is not easy to stop. The truth is harder, but will set you free. How can we stop lying? Try to catch the lie before it goes out; bite it. Slowly you can win the battle.

josephpich@gmail.com

Salt and Light

Jesus reminds us today in the Gospel that we Christians are salt and light; salt of the earth and light of the world. Both are related to two senses, seeing and tasting. Without light we cannot see. Without salt the food becomes insipid. Jesus doesn’t say what we should be, but what we are; we are because of our Baptism. Not because we are better, or because we have done well, but because of his will, because he wants it. Christopher West always reminds us: You are a gift, be what you are.

We are precious in the eyes of God, like Gollum with his ring. In the old world salt was very valuable. The Jews made their offerings to God seasoned with salt, to make it pleasant for him. The Greeks considered salt to be divine. The Roman soldiers were some times paid with salt. In the times where there were no fridges, to make the food last, it had to be covered with salt. The human body contains almost a kilo of salt. Comparing us with salt, Jesus is telling us how valuable we are in his eyes.

What does it mean to be salt? It is white and pure; we should live a clean life, different from other people’s tasteless lives. It gives flavour to the food; we should make the world more pleasant, more lovable. It sterilises the wounds, stopping infections; we should preserve society from the effects of sin. It melts the ice when the roads are covered with it; we should melt the coldness of humanity with the warmth of the love of God. It preserves the food from decay; we should be like preservatives, to stop society from disintegrating, keeping things fresh and healthy. It produces thirst, the desire to drink; we should foster our thirst for God, that only his love can quench. But if the salt becomes tasteless what can you do with it? Throw it away. If it becomes contaminated, it becomes useless. When the salt in the underground water comes to the surface, the field becomes barren. It is possible for us to lose our way, our truth and our light.

Light is very important for us. Without the light of the sun it is impossible to live. Our eyes are our most valuable sense. The same happens in the spiritual life: God is the light. The first thing he did when he created the world was to separate light from darkness. When we see God, we see light. The devil is the prince of darkness. Hell is pitch black. When we baptise a baby we light a candle, to signify that his soul is full of light. Jesus came to dispel darkness.

We are the light of the world, not our light, but his light. We need to let his light to shine on us. We need to learn how to reflect his light, not ours. Like the moon, that reflects the light of the sun. We compare Mary with the moon. We should be like a lighthouse: to show people where the rocks are, where the danger is. Jesus is the beacon; we are the lighthouse. We can be a beautiful lighthouse, close to the sea, on the forefront, but if our beacon is out, we are useless. To give light we have to have it. Many times instead of salt we are vinegar; instead of giving light, we give darkness. We ask Mary our mother to remind us what we are: children of the light, pure mineral salt.

josephpich@gmail.com