It’s the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a time when we are called to reflect on the cost of discipleship. For early Christians, the cost of discipleship could mean their lives. However, in modern-day America, there seem to be few costs for most of us.
The day before Ash Wednesday traditionally was a time of revelry, called Carnival, when people engaged in sometimes unseemly activities because of the abstinence from joyful activities during Lent. A third century sermon by one of the Early Church Fathers stated that mortification of the flesh would lead to purity of the mind. But is that true?
That is the tradition, of course. As we prepare for Lent, perhaps a better way to observe this liturgical season soon to be upon us is engaging the world rather than withdrawing from it. Scripture tells us that after Jesus fasted and was tested, he did not just sit on a mountain, but entered the world to engage us in building the realm of God on earth.
Prayer for the Day
We come to you, O Lord, today in anticipation of the season to come,
But we fear what you want us to anticipate
We come to you, O Lord, today in expectation of a new way of life,
But we wonder what it is that you expect of us.
Move us, Holy One, beyond our trepidations and concerns
So we are able to more fully live in discipleship.
In the name of the One who shows us how to live,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet (1875-1926)
You had better live your best and act your best and think your best today, for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the tomorrows that follow.
- Harriet Martineau, English social theorist (1802-1876)
Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber;
Save yourself like a gazelle from the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler.
Go to the ant, you sluggard, consider its ways and be wise.
Without having any chief or officer or ruler, it prepares its food in summer,
And gathers its sustenance in harvest.
Proverbs 6: 4-8