On Ashes, Penance and Politics

Penance is an expression of love and gratitude to God for
the gift of forgiveness.   This is why we put on ashes on Ash Wednesday.
 It is a sign of the love that is supposed to
be alive in our hearts, a reality which we must live out in our lives,
an effort that must really cost us — or our gratitude will not mean all that
much.  

Why do we need to give costly public expression to our
effort to live a converted life?  Because we were redeemed at an even
greater price by One who willingly bore every humiliation that was necessary
that we might not perish.   Those who have contemplated how far God has
gone to forgive our trespasses carry deep within themselves a sense of how sin
dehumanizes and the conviction that no human power can repair the wounds sin
causes.  They know this because the love of God discloses a partial
glimpse of the wounds they have caused to the dignity of others by their sins
— and the even deeper wounds they have caused themselves.  This is the
political dimension of sin — it has consequences we do not intend.  It is
humble to see this and courageous to dare by divine assistance to address
it. 

On this score, we feel the burden of guilt, a burden so
great we know no power of our own can relieve it.
 Even if in our cleverness we have found ways so that those we have hurt
cannot hold us accountable, even if in our own self-defeating genius we will
not hold ourselves accountable for our own actions, there is Someone else who will not be deceived
and who does demand an account.   The voice of the One who fashioned our
inmost being, who knows the truth about who we are and whom we are meant to be
– this Voice not only admonishes us, even more He grieves for us.  His cry
echoes in the labyrinthine passages of our own heart in crucified anguish.
 The real horror of our own lack of humanity, our indifference, our
selfishness – this is always before us if we dare to look in the direction of
the cry, into the eyes of the One who gazes on us even now in unspeakable love.
 And it is only when we dare to look, only when we stand firm and listen,
that our healing can begin, that the burden can be lifted.

Because sin has a political consequence, so does
forgiveness.  God’s healing love reaches past our own failures and the One
crucified by love does not fail to embrace those our hostility to Him has most
wounded.  Such is the greatness of Divine Mercy, the Ocean of Mercy which
torrents forth from the Cross, the inexhaustible wellspring when our trust in
Him unleashes.  Broken relationships can be restored by the Blood of the
Lamb.   Reconciliation can be achieved because the power of the Cross is
greater than the enmity that separates us.  All strife can be overcome by
such love and all manner of contention baptized in peace.  

Penance is the attempt to respond to this incalculable love
unleashed in the world by our faith.   It is the effort to say “thank
you” to the One who has released us from our debt in such a wonderful way.
  His love rebuilds what we have destroyed.  We feel the need do make
a gesture of gratitude, to assist if even in the smallest of ways in the
restitution that God has made possible.  

If we feel the need to pour ourselves out in this effort of
gratitude, it is because we realize the great debt God has forgiven and we are
pierced to the heart by the extent He has gone to redeem us.   Besides the
deeply personal things that are privately known, He has also forgiven us of so
many social things — all kinds of failure to take care of or speak out for the
most vulnerable: the unborn, the aged, the dying, the poor, the sick and the
hungry.   Surely, our gratitude for the incalculable gift God has lavished
on us in his Son extends to the plight of those most in need?  As we pray
about how we are to express our thanksgiving for the wondrous gift of
forgiveness, He provides new wisdom on how to approach failures in these areas
with an invincible hope so that the dignity of those who rely on us might be
restored. 

Because forgiveness has political dimensions, so does
penance.  This gratitude to the Lord must live in the Church as a visible,
concrete, tangible reality.  Penitential love knows it is not enough to
love those God gives to us — they need to feel the warmth of His love through
us.   Such penance is cultivated best in the intimate relationships
of our family.  Yet no genuine community of faith lasts long without this
concrete disclosure of conversion of heart.  It expresses itself in words
like “Please forgive me” and in tears and in tenderness and in real
changes of behavior.  This loving response to the gift of forgiveness must
extend out from our closest relationships and into the broader society in which
we live.  When it does, penance makes possible a culture of life and
civilization of love.  

If we are hated for our faith, our faith forbids us to
continue to hate in return.  More than that, in the face of the exceeding
Mercy of the Father, it is not enough for us to wish our enemies well in our
imagination or to think good thoughts about our persecutors in our heads.
  We must constantly reach out to those who hate us in love even more.
 If we must speak the truth those who hate us do not want to hear, we must
not be discouraged by their rejection and we must never give up hope in them.
 We must extend the hand of friendship to them whenever they permit us to,
and above all we must lavish them with kindness at every opportunity — because
this is how we have been loved.  

The man who knows he has been loved uncommonly never runs
out of uncommon ways to love those the Lord brings his way, even when those the
Lord brings appear in the difficult disguise of a brutal enemy or a hostile
political foe.  This is because penance is oriented not to a naive hope.
 Instead our gratitude to God directs us to a real solidarity which the
Lord himself makes possible even when it seems impossible to achieve, even in
the face of the anti-thesis of the hope we have inside.  Such the penance and politics that flow from
the Cross: those who stand firm in their faith at this threshold, even if
they falter, will not be overcome.