Ash Wednesday

In this episode, Fr Richard Healey (RH) reflects on the profound themes of Lent, encouraging us to deepen our relationship with God through prayer, almsgiving, and fasting. He invites us to ponder the question, “How does God feel about you?” and to explore God’s nature as described in Exodus 34: tender, compassionate, and patient. RH emphasises the importance of creating space for self-reflection and making room for God’s presence in our lives. This Lenten journey is an opportunity to experience God’s love more deeply and to grow in our spiritual friendship with Him.

00:00:00 And so we come once again to this time of this season of lent, this opportunity to return to God, to embrace this call, this invitation to the wonder of God. And I think a really good question to kind of ponder as we enter into this time of, of lent. These next 46 days until the great celebration of the Sunday to end all Sunday’s, the great Sunday of Easter Sunday is to ask the question, how does God feel about you? Not how does God think about you? Not kind of. What are the ways that God might love you that might come into it? But just to to really ponder how am I going to grow in my relationship, my friendship with God so we can have a base point, a starting point for our reflection about, well, how do I grow in that? And so the first question, What is God feel about me? Now, for some of you, you might think not much, or you might kind of have all kinds of of thoughts about that.

00:01:23 And it takes a while. It takes some patience. It takes some silence to really ask this question and to find the space to be able to really open ourselves to this gift of this question. The readings give us some thoughts, you know, along the way for that. One of the most quoted will, the most quoted passage in all of the Old Testament is Ezekiel. Sorry, from the book of Exodus, chapter 34. It’s where Aaron and all of the people of God have just apostatize. They’ve just turned away from the Lord. They’ve just built for themselves a golden calf, and they’ve worshipped this idol. You know, the very first commandments that they were given in chapter 20 of the Book of Exodus. They’ve broken in glorious form. They’ve broken these commandments. And the Lord, it seems, is a rather annoyed about this. And he’s wanting to destroy this people. But Moses intervenes. Moses intercedes on behalf of the people. And there is this question, you know, who are you, Lord? What is your nature? What is your character? And the Lord offers to Moses this description, and it’s the first time that God has spoken about who he is and what his characteristics are.

00:02:57 And it’s what we have in our first reading today. A God of all tenderness and compassion. Slow to anger, rich in graciousness and ready to relent. That’s the way the God describes himself. That’s the friendship. That’s the relationship. The one with which we are invited to deepen during these days of lent. So going back to that question, how does God feel about me? Maybe some of these characteristics might be part of that description, because this is the way that God describes himself. This is the way that God is inviting us into a deeper sense of that relationship. And we manifest that in the ways that the gospel reveals by engaging in prayer, by offering almsgiving, by embracing this opportunity to be free from all of the distractions, all of the stuff that can get in the way of our friendship with God. That’s what fasting is ultimately about, opening us to this hunger. It’s why we have the one hour fast before the Eucharist, because we want to remember that we hunger for what is true.

00:04:12 We hunger for God. We hunger for the thing that is going to ultimately give us this absolute gift of life. So how might I grow in tenderness? How might I more deeply experience the compassion of God? How might I acknowledge that God, who is slow to anger? I love in the Hebrew that it actually is a phrase that indicates that God has a big nose. You know, because often when we get kind of a bit hot under the temper, where a temper starts to kind of grow. It often manifests in the nose that our nostrils kind of get a bit flared and a bit hot. And, you know, we get hot headed, all of those kinds of descriptions. And the Hebrew actually says that God has long nostrils. You know, that the nostrils take a while for the flaming anger to really manifest and be present. The god is like that. And so sometimes we think that God is just constantly annoyed and frustrated and angry at us. But that’s his revelation. No, I’m actually slow to anger.

00:05:22 I’m actually rich in graciousness, and I’m ready to relent. How might we grow? What might we need to do to make more space for God? How can I offer my heart more fully and more completely to God? These are the invitations. These are the questions. These is the way the God is inviting us into. And how can I make space? How can I have patience with myself to sit in silence and to listen to that question? And what my God want to offer to me, to teach me, to instruct me, to love me more, more deeply, more authentically, more fully over these Lenten days. And let’s open ourselves to that. Don’t just do the same things that you’ve always done during the season of lent. Where’s the fun in that? We’re invited into a new encounter, a new opportunity to grow in God and to experience the wonder of what he’s calling us and inviting us into. So how might we answer that question? And how might we see opportunities to let God love us more, to free us more, to be available to us more? And let’s make space to let those things be revealed and manifested during these days of lent.