Ash Wednesday: "Gardening Tips for Lent"

Brief Audio Reflection for Ash Wednesday "Gardening Tips for Lent" (Matthew Matthew 6:1-21)

Once again Ash Wednesday inaugurates the season of self-examination and self-denial we call Lent -- a name derived from the Old English “lencten” which means “lengthen”, referring to the longer period of daylight in the transition from late winter to early spring. In recent years self-denial has become the more readily identified aspect of Lent, as in: “I’m giving up champagne and caviar for Lent.”…Or some other, more serious, expression of sacrifice.

In our gospel for Ash Wednesday Jesus focuses on self examination. He does not ask us to nit-pick petty flaws. He asks us to take on the big one, the ubiquitous one, the invasive and pernicious one…Pride. 

Pride is the crabgrass in the garden of our souls. It produces no fruit while it overgrows grace and strangles goodness. And in this gospel, Jesus warns us sternly not to let pride choke the love out of our worship and generosity. As Jesus shows us, pride has the ability to make a pious fraud of our prayer. It can flip our charity on its head and turn it into self-aggrandizing cant. Ultimately, it threatens to transform our entire spiritual journey into a squalid little ego trip...