Today, Ash Wednesday, we begin our Lenten observance with the reception of ashes.  In this photo above, Fr Simeon, from St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer Massachusetts, distributes ashes to the sisters.

Fr. Simeon reminded us in today's homily that Lent is about new birth. It mirrors the natural environment and our experience of Spring. Like the plants and trees around us, we hope to shed winter's vestiges and become alive with new growth so that we may resurrect with Christ on Easter. 

The first reading from Sirach for today’s liturgy says: “The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had; so too does one’s speech disclose the bent of one’s mind” (24:6). Our speech, our words are revelatory.  Do not our words show the care of heart and soul that they have had?  Our words reveal how silent or quiet we are inside.  Interior silence brings wisdom, compassion, mercy, even fruitfulness to our words.  Behind the words we utter we get a sense of ourselves, our true selves.  And this self is in process, always growing, a self that is always being converted to becoming more Christ-like in demeanor and in action.

On February 11, 2022, Abbots and Abbesses from all over the world gathered in Assisi (Italy) for the first part of the General Chapter, elected Dom Bernardus Peeters as our Abbot General.  

For the readings of this Third Sunday, it is striking that two great voices and thinkers converge around one word: ‘today’. Those voices are Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pope Francis.  Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar in his commentary on the readings for the Eucharist compares the ‘today’ of the first reading with the ‘today’ spoken by Jesus in the gospel.  Ezra’s proclamation in the Old Testament reading is uplifting.  He says to the people who are weeping as they receive the word of God: ‘Today is holy to the Lord your God….Today is holy to our Lord.  Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength’ (Nehemiah 8:10).  Jesus’ proclamation that the ‘Spirit of the Lord is upon me’, and ‘Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing’ (Luke 4:18, 21) creates consternation among many of his listeners.  They wonder ‘who is this’, and the words Jesus speaks “seem blasphemous and…incomprehensible to his listeners” (Light of the Word, p.272).  With this text from the Epistle: “All have been given to drink of the one Spirit” (1 Co 12:13),

With the wedding feast at Cana, we are given the third manifestation of the Incarnate Word, the Word made flesh.  God has united with humanity in sending his beloved Son to and for us, fully human and fully Divine.  The other two manifestations being Epiphany, and the Baptism of Jesus.  The miracle at Cana is “the first of Jesus’ signs, that is, symbols of the divine power at work in the Incarnate Word” (Hearing the Word of God, John Donahue, SJ, p.23).  At the beginning of this new liturgical cycle, we are given three ‘manifestations’ of God’s self-gift in Christ.  This self-gift exposes the nature of God: God is Love.  And this Love has now become part of our flesh, part of our very being.  As it is written in the Acts of the Apostles (17:28): ‘In the One with whom we move, and live and have our essential being’.  Next week we will see Jesus beginning his public ministry with his prophetic announcement “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Lk 4:18).