Oh my gosh! Agh! Daggh! Agggh! Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz
and this is Ascension Presents. So years ago, when I
was first ordained a priest, I was living in, I don't know, Duluth, Hibbing
somewhere in northern Minnesota and I would listen to
Christian radio to wake up. And now I know people say, "I don't like Christian music"
or "I love Christian music." That's great,
wonderful. I use it to wake up. On the first Lent,
the first Ash Wednesday, I remember
waking up to the Christian music saying, "I can't wait for them
to talk about Ash Wednesday. I can't wait for them to talk about-
'Here's the beginning of Lent. Let's all do this, Christians
and move forward to celebrate the resurrection
of Jesus at Easter' " and then realized no one said anything. In fact, there was
no difference and I remember thinking, "Oh! I didn't realize. Not all Christians
commemorate or enter into Lent." I mean, some Lutherans do
and some Methodists do. I think Methodists. Anglicans, Episcopalians, they do but a lot of other denominations don't. And it was one of those signs of like,
oh, here's the body of Christ divided. I didn't realize that people didn't do this. What I didn't expect
and didn't anticipate would be that there's some animosity,
I think, sometimes, when Catholics enter into Lent. So some non-Catholic Christians can have a little bit of "so what's this all about?" kind of a thing. And sometimes it's friendly
and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's like,
"Oh, I just didn't know about that." And sometimes it's,
"Hey, where's that in the Bible?" Strictly speaking,
Lent isn't in the Bible, but what you do have is
you have forty days. The number forty throughout the whole Bible
that means training, testing, preparing. So you have
the forty days of the flood. You know, it rains 40 days,
40 nights. You have the
Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years as they're being trained and tested
and prepared to enter the promised land. You have Jesus himself who
goes into the wilderness for forty days to do battle with the devil, to train,
to be tested and to prepare for his ministry. And so as Christians,
as followers of Christ, we have the same kind of thing. Well, if Jesus went and engaged in battle,
training, testing and this engage and preparing, then we're going to do the same thing. As followers of Christ, we're
going to take 40-ish days and we're going to set that aside for training and
for testing and for preparing for something incredible, like the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead. And so we
take that idea and apply it to our lives. Now in the early Church,
they took that so seriously that all those who are going to get
baptized at Easter, would have the season leading up to Easter as that time of purification and
enlightenment. A time of training
and trial and preparing. And in that, one of
the things they were doing, is that's called Lent. Now, other Christians saw this,
people who were already baptized saw it and said, "I want that too!" I want to engage in this trial time. I want to engage in this time where I get to do battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil, so they did. So that's kind of in a nutshell where
Lent comes from, even though it's not,
strictly speaking, in the Bible, you must celebrate, enter into this time of
training, trial, testing, and preparing. Other people ask the question,
"So, where is ashes in the Bible?" Well, they're kind of all over the place,
especially in the Old Testament. Whenever someone was
repenting of something, they repented in dust and ashes
or in sackcloth and ashes. Ashes are that sign, a biblical sign,
of interior repentance. Are they necessary?
No. Are they helpful?
Yes! Just like a lot of stuff. Is it necessary to have a cross around your neck?
No. Is it sometimes helpful for people?
Yeah! Is it necessary to have a Jesus t-shirt?
No. Or a little decal on the back of your car?
No. Is it sometimes helpful?
Yes, because it helps me remember. OK, as I'm driving down the road, if I cut someone off,
they might see that Jesus decal and I'm not representing, you're not
witnessing to Jesus, so is it necessary? Absolutely not, but is it helpful?
Sometimes. Same thing with all the other stuff
that we do in the Church. Probably not necessary,
some of them but helpful,
hopefully all of them. I know people who have asked,
"What about the whole meat on Fridays? Where in the Bible does it say,
'Don't eat meat on Fridays'?" The Bible doesn't say avoid meat on Fridays.
What does it say? It says Jesus died on Friday. So Jesus' death on Friday
means that that day is changed. We commemorate that day. We see that day as a day where we
enter into the solemnity of Christ offering up
himself to the Father for our sins. So it's a day of mourning
or a day of fasting whereas Sunday, the day he rose from the dead,
we always see that as a day of feasting, it's a day of celebration, it's always, no matter what season of the year, no matter what time of the year it is, Sunday is always a day of feasting,
it is always a day of celebrating the resurrection. And so think about this: any given week
becomes this entering into the mystery of
Jesus's death and his resurrection. And so in order to observe that and say,
"Let's build them into our day," the Church said, "How about this? Meat is associated with feasting in most cultures and since Friday is not a day of feasting,
let's just say this, generally speaking, make it easy, right,
it's not a difficult thing to avoid meat, we're gonna say no feasting on Fridays." If meat is associated with feasting,
no eating meat on Fridays. There's nothing bad with meat. We're not prohibiting certain foods
like it says in the New Testament. No, we're just saying that on this day,
hey, enter into the fact that this is a solemn day. It's a good day. Good Friday, but it's a solemn day
where we recognize Christ's sacrifice. We participate in it. People can explain it by saying that that's the
day Jesus offered up his very flesh, so that day, we don't eat flesh. Like, that makes sense too. Now someone will say,
"No, but OK, so this whole Lent thing though. Why do you do it?" And I remember having some Catholic friends say,
"Well, it just helps me be a better person, helps me kind of discipline myself,
follow Jesus more closely." And then saying, "OK, but you know being a
better person is not going to get you to heaven." You're right.
Jesus gets you to heaven, right? Jesus is the one
who makes heaven possible. The Holy Spirit is one who makes heaven actual
makes it actually actual not just possible,
but real for us to enter into heaven but as Catholic Christians, we believe that when we cooperate with God's grace, when we do his will, that we're getting closer and closer to him no matter what. That when we cooperate with
the Holy Spirit and his actions in our lives and say yes to him and no to sin, then we freely unite our sufferings
to the suffering of Jesus, that it does something. Yes, Jesus is the one who makes
heaven possible, but you know this in the Scriptures, Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of God but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven." So we know that this is true. We know that yes, doing disciplines of Lent
is not going to save anyone in the sense that
"now you're worth going to heaven." No, Jesus is the one who saves.
Jesus is the one who saves but our response is to do what?
To do the will of the Father. so in that, we say,
"OK, during this Lent, I'm going to enter more deeply into prayer. I'm going to offer up more sacrifices
in the sense of fasting and I'm going to enter into almsgiving,
help my brother and sister, why? Because I believe that
God is calling me to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. I believe that his will is
found in getting close to him and listening to the Church
and obeying what the Scripture says. I believe that when I say yes to these disciplines,
I'm saying yes to him in a certain sense. When it comes to entering into Lent, we don't do it because we think that it'll make us worthy of heaven. When it come to entering into Lent, we don't do it because we think that now I'll be saved because I gave up meat on Fridays. We do it because we believe it's a response to
our loving Father and we're trying to respond with love
to the God who is love. From all of us here at Ascension Presents,
my name is Father Mike. God bless.
