“When you pray, go to your inner room and pray in secret.”
As you all know, I have a large number of brothers and sisters;
9 brothers and 2 sisters.
As kids, we would get out of hand fairly regularly.
My mother would typically be the disciplinarian
and she would stop us. “Hey, knock it off!”
and then she would give us that look.
That look only mothers can give.
Looks right through you.
Sees right into your soul.
Yeah. You know. She knows it all right.
If we disobeyed that look, whooooohhh, it went up a level.
It would go like “Brendan, stop.”
And I’d go, “What?”
The look again and “Knock it off.”
And if I didn’t stop, “Brendan, go to your room.”
Yeah, you know how that feels, boys and girls.
That ole room call!
When you go to your room, she would add this
“Go to your room and think about what you’ve done”
and then came the really cincher
“and there will be no food until you figure it out.”
I was like "No food?”
It would depend on how stubborn I was;
like some days, I would go and I’m like okay, yeah,
and then I’d come out a few minutes later, “I’m sorry.”
And then, she would ask,
“Well, how are you going to make amends?”
Then I would say, “Well, I’m going to say ‘sorry to my brother’
and I’m going to clean up the mess I caused.’”
“Okay. All right. Go ahead. Here’s your dinner.”
But somedays, I became stubborn.
And I’d say “I didn’t cause it, I’d say to myself,
I’m not the one who started it.”
Now what would happen is every now and then,
either my Mum or my Dad if he was home would come back,
“Have you figured it out yet?”
And I’d say, “I didn’t.”
And as soon as I’d say that, boom, they left the room.
And until I would say,
“Okay. Yes, I’m sorry.”
Then the food came.
It sounds really harsh
and I’m not recommending it to your parents but maybe. . .
it’s not a bad idea every now and then.
You guys get a little, a little difficult!
My mother didn’t even know how biblical she was.
I was told to go to my room
and think about what I had done.
Pray and reflect.
And you will have no food. Fasting!
Then what are you going to do to make amends? Almsgiving.
Wow. She was so biblical, and she didn’t even know it.
But here is the part, with all joking aside,
every now and then, we need to take a time out.
You probably don’t have 9 brothers and 2 sisters, I know,
but I’m sure your house gets a little chaotic.
And our lives tend to.
Lent is not a time-out for individuals.
It’s a collective time-out that we willingly take,
knowing that we need to pause.
We need to pause and look at our lives and ask:
What have I done wrong?
We pause today in particular on Ash Wednesday;
and with humility, we remember how sacred this time is;
we acknowledge this is a time of renewal;
a time of repentance;
a time of conversion;
a time to reflect and look at our lives;
and a time to pray.
It is a time to examine what I am doing well;
and what I am not doing so well?
In this time of Lent, there are several things:
we do: pray, fasting and almsgiving.
They are all directed to the same core reality;
to bring us back to God;
to remind us how precious our time here is;
how valuable this time is;
and how sacred this time is here.
Our prayer is directed at repentance, conversion, saying,
“Lord, I’m sorry for the things I have not done well.
Help me to do the things that I know I ought to do;
and to do them well.”
It is a time to fast; to give up something.
Fasting in itself is not an end,
it is to direct us to an end, like the food on my time out;
it is directed to correct my behavior.
In this case, we call it almsgiving
so we give up something to remind ourselves of
so many who do not have; and we give to them.
We are not having you go to a time-out in your room
but it is a time that we are called to pray more often.
When you go back to your classrooms today, boys and girls,
I’m going to ask you to take a stone
that your teacher is going to give you;
it’s a little pebble;
and we ask you to use it as a reminder.
Instead of giving you a time-out all the time,
we are asking you to take that prayer stone
and put it somewhere in your room; or maybe in your bag.
Put it somewhere where it is easy to see and remind you,
it is a daily reminder,
—o pray, to fast and to do almsgiving for the whole of the 40 days.
Put it at your prayer desk;
or your study desk;
or you put it in your bag.
Put it somewhere where you will see it often.
Here’s what we do in this collective time-out that we do.
We promise to pause; to reflect and to pray
about our journey at St. Simon’s.
Today, in a special way, we mark this time
with the ashes on our forehead.
You might say this sounds counter to what the gospel says.
It sounds like we are wearing stuff so everyone will notice
but ash is a mark of a sinner.
What we are putting on our forehead is “I am a sinner”
and the cross is a sign of the redemption of that sinner.
I am a redeemed sinner.
It is not a badge of honor.
It is a badge of humility.
And today, we acknowledge that all of us, publicly and collectively,
that we have made mistakes;
that we have turned away from God;
said and done things we are not proud of;
and that we humbly ask the Lord to forgive us
and we are reminded of how precious this time is;
so you will hear “Repent and believe in the gospel”
or you will hear “ashes to ashes” you came from ashes
and you will return to ashes.
