Ash Wednesday

So it begins. Another Lent has come.

Each year I make resolutions in seeking to purify my passions, to regain control and in so doing, to turn back to God again.  It always seems that Lent comes just when I am really struggling with something, so it's almost a relief.  I don't know what it is, perhaps the grace of the season, that helps me to let go and fall into God's mercy; a very welcome refuge.

This year, I will also be trying to incorporate what I learned in the silence of the monastery. It's not something I can explain, but only seek to reproduce; it's an interior attitude that I don't think can be cultivated but has to be first experienced in some kind of a purified manner.  (As I said...I can't explain it!)

This morning I awoke breathing a sigh of relief, knowing that we enter this desert of Lent, knowing that today is a day of fasting and penance and prayer, knowing that it will be a struggle.  Yet the terms of this struggle are somewhat defined and we do not go into it alone, but follow the footsteps of Our Lord who goes before us and leads us into the solitude that will ultimately take us through the dark days of His Passion and Death.  It is only through this journey that we can fully enter into the joy of the Resurrection.