Day 1
TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN
TO DUST YOU SHALL RETURN
DAILY BEARINGS: WEEK 1
You are entering into the desert.
We have been filled with the Holy Spirit in baptism and confirmation and have been set free by God from the devil’s power. Like the Israelites before us, we are now being led into the desert so that God can fulfill his work in us. The desert is a tough place to survive; in fact, it is impossible to survive there without God’s help. But God is with us, providing manna for us, moving as a pillar of fire and cloud before us, leading the way, and giving us strength. Now is a time for stern sobriety—a time to settle our minds, strengthen our wills, and get ready for our life-changing trek across the desert.
Guideposts
1. Rely on God. Acts of asceticism are only one part of this exercise. If you want to see real change, you need to spend undistracted time talking with—and relying on—God daily, and that starts today. (For more on the importance of prayer and an explanation of silent contemplative prayer, see “Fidelity to Prayer” in the Field Guide. For a how to on praying a holy hour, see “How to Pray a Holy Hour” in the Field Guide.)
2. Commit to your fraternity. If you haven’t yet set a time to have your first weekly fraternity meeting, stop what you’re doing and send a message to your fraternity in the app right now. They are there for a reason. (For more on the importance of your fraternity, see “Made for Fraternity” in the Field Guide.)
3. Be a well set anchor. Every day you will send and receive a message from a man in your fraternity that you partner up with. Stay faithful to this and you will both remain on the road to lifelong change. (Think daily check-ins with your anchor aren’t important? See the sub-section titled, “Be a Well Set Anchor,” within the “Made for Fraternity” section of the Field Guide.)
4. Let the Word of God lead you. There is real danger to wandering in the desert. Live these 40 days with a solid guide, the word of God and the daily reflections.
5. Be ready to face temptation. Encouraging us to watch television, movies, or televised sports while at work, alone at home, or while waiting in line is a way the devil may try to distract us from doing the Lord’s will. Exercise freedom from these mind-numbing temptations. Stay attentive to God.
6. Make a good confession. The best way to make it across the desert from where you are now to where you want to be, is to travel light. It’s time. No excuses. Go to confession.
7. Examine your day nightly. Each night let your knees hit the floor and make a good examination of your day. Give thanks for graces, ask forgiveness for sins, and resolve to live the next day even better with the grace of God. This will aid you in living a solid lent and a solid life. (For an outline of how to do a nightly examen see “How to Make a Nightly Examen” in the Field Guide.)
Pray the Lord blesses you and your fraternity with a foundation for real personal change during this season of Lent.
Pray for the grace of perseverance with the Lord for all Exodus Men, just as they are praying for you.
Our Father …
JOEL 2:12-14
"Yet even now," says the LORD, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and tear your hearts and not your garments." Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy, and repents of evil. Who knows whether he will not turn and repent, and leave a blessing behind him...”
REFLECTION
“As we begin this Lenten time of serving the Lord more carefully engaging in a contest of good works, let us prepare our souls to fight temptation, for we know that the more zealous we are for our salvation, the more energetic are the attacks of our enemies.” (St. Leo the Great, Sermon 39 on Lent)
Lent is again beginning, and we are again heading to church to repent our sins and receive our ashes. It will help to ask ourselves why this immersion into repentance comes at the very start of the holy season. After all, we know that God is goodness and light and that he wants us to share his joy. We know that the great Easter feast is a celebration of victory over darkness and death. Yes, we surely need to recognize our sins and our failures, but why give this so prominent a place? Why start a forty-day retreat on what seems to be a down note?
The reason is similar to why we begin every Mass with a “Confiteor” and a “Kyrie.” God is truth, and he puts up with no illusions. He always deals with his sons in truth. Here is a profound truth that is easy to lose hold of: we are fallen, wounded to the death by sin, and desperately in need of God’s help.
When recovering addicts gather together for mutual support, the first thing out of the mouth of anyone who speaks is usually: “I am an addict.” The point of the practice is not to reinforce negativity or to dwell morbidly on past troubles; it is an exercise in reality and an insistence on self-knowledge. These good people know that if they ever lose sight of this truth about themselves, they will surely get into trouble.
Something similar is going on in our Ash Wednesday observance. God has great things in store for us; he has promised us a life beyond our dreams, and even now he has graces and light for us during this holy season. But there is a condition for our receiving what he wants to give us: we need to remember our true state. If we forget the profound moral wound that has corrupted our minds and hearts—which only God can heal—we will surely get into trouble.
We all deal with the effects of original sin. But we live in a time and a culture that is in deep denial about our moral disease, and it is hard even for Christians not to be infected by the error. We all have heard the claim: there is nothing wrong with us or with the world that we can’t somehow fix if we just get the right information and apply the right techniques. If we do happen to find something wrong in us, it’s probably there because we have been the victim of someone else’s evil. People are fundamentally decent and nice and just need some minor improvements. This is a set of dangerous errors, and it needs to be repudiated by anyone who wants to be a disciple of Christ and to see things as they really are. We need to keep remembering, lest we forget it, that the reason the world is so unjust and so full of war, oppression, greed, and selfishness is because people just like us populate it.
The first step toward living in the truth (it’s also the middle step and the last step) is repentance: getting a firm hold of the reality of our need and putting all our hope in God’s merciful desire to forgive our sins and to heal our wounded souls.
So, let us welcome this day of fasting and repentance. Let us eagerly, if soberly, receive those ashes, knowing that if we take this sign of death upon us now and humbly ask God’s forgiveness, we will be walking a road that will put death itself to its end.
During your holy hour today, consider what false thoughts and beliefs you hold that need to be put to death. Then, ask the Lord to give you the grace to let these thoughts go forever so that you can freely turn to him, the source of life.