Ash Wednesday

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 5:5-6).

I once went to an Ash Wednesday service with a Christian friend who wasn’t familiar with this tradition. He stayed through the whole thing, but didn’t go up for the imposition of ashes. When we walked out into the bright noonday, me with my conspicuous ashes and he without, he told me that he hadn’t wanted to get any because of this reading from Matthew.

He felt that the ashes – an obvious sign of the worship we’d just been doing – were against the spirit of a Gospel which tells us not to wave our religious observance around as a flag of our own moral superiority.

Having wandered around downtown Montreal before with the ashes smeared on my forehead, I’d felt many things about it: ‘embarrassed’ and ‘uncomfortable’ were probably my biggest emotions, because of all the semi-hostile stares you get from people. I personally had never felt like I was using the ashes to brag. But a part of me could see his point.

I thought about it a long time, and I came to realize that the problem with the hypocrites in the gospel reading isn’t that they’re standing on the street to pray; it’s that they’re doing it to be seen by men. If what you want from prayer is the reward of being noticed, the reward of having people look at you in a certain way, then that’s all the reward you’ll get. The true reasons behind our devotions and prayer can only be known in the secret places of the heart, whether we make those prayers in a church, on a street corner, or locked in a room somewhere. What our Father sees in secret defines the true reality of our worship.

After all, the Bible is full of stories where people put on sackcloth and ashes, people who tear their clothes and fast openly. People pray out loud all the time. What many of these stories have in common is that this open worship is all about acknowledging sinfulness, wretchedness, and the need for God’s help and forgiveness. With today’s ashes we’re in good company, as we remember our mortality and penitence through them.

As we seek to discover Jesus, to understand him through this Lenten journey, we need to remember that we are called to be outward signs of Christ, in whom our lives are hidden and whose light shines through us. This doesn’t mean we should be proud or vainglorious or superior like the hypocrite, but it does mean we have to be open to standing out uncomfortably. With the sign of Ashes, we are called to be humble like the Christ who came not to be served but to serve; we are called to turn our hearts toward seeking forgiveness, that we may discover the Jesus who forgives.

“Accomplish in us, O God, the work of your salvation, That we may show forth your glory in the world” (BAS).