Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:12-18, 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

“But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door…”  Matthew 6:6

When I would go to my listening place,
closing the door to be alone in the quiet,
the whole world would come knocking,
banging to be let in.
The more I resisted,
the louder the knocking,
till one night, I relented.

Throwing wide the door I spoke to the night air, “Come on in, there’s room enough in here!”

To my surprise I found there was ample room on the inside,
and along with the world’s woes came wonders
and I was visited by the sacred silence I had sought.

 “…return to me with your whole heart,
with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;
Rend your hearts, not your garments…”
Joel 2: 12-13

The discipleship path,
the way of the cross, is not a dissecting path.
It is an intersecting path.

“It is a delusion to suppose that the disturbing questions will,
if ignored, go away, if suppressed be forgotten,
or that by hiding ourselves like naked Adam (and Eve) we can escape them.” 
Alan Eccelstone

As we turn our lives to the crosswalk
of Lent’s dark journey,
let us locate ourselves in the intersection
and there open a holding space
to welcome the world.

Over these next weeks
exercise your holding heart
and make room for the world.

Go to your listening place.
Open up, within you,
open up around you,
a space wide and deep.

And in the quiet,
let the whole world
tumble in.

All the hurts and hopes of loved ones,
of enemies, of neighbors,
let them all in.

The complex tangles
of struggles personal and global,
let them in.

Summon the most ravaged and despairing.
Find room for those who are sorely afflicted.
Let them all come. Bar none!

Let this space hold and enfold them!
Let the expansive mystery of God’s love envelop
all that is confounding, disturbing, unresolved or unrealized.

Hold it, hold it all till it fills you.

Lift the brimming pitcher
and empty yourself into the vast vessel,
that is the Sacred Heart.

“…Then the LORD was stirred to concern for the land
and took pity on the people.” Joel 2: 18

Kyrie, Christe, Kyrie Eleison!

Joe Grant
Director of Programs, JustFaith Ministries 
Louisville, KY