Ash Wednesday – 5 March 2025
Pope Francis once spoke about the new poverties, “poverties produced by the culture of wellbeing.”[1] And in that light he defined the poor today as those who are those afraid of the future.[2] Those afraid of the future. On this Ash Wednesday, all of us are poor because for all of us the future presents with great uncertainty. The world order is changing; decisions are being made by powerful people that will have dramatic consequences for much of the world, including ourselves. The distinctions between truth and falsehood, fact and fiction, have become intentionally blurred so that the masses might not stand in the way of powerful and sinister political and social agendas. We discover ourselves in dangerous times, full of uncertainty and confusion. We do not know how even the remainder of the coming month will play out.
And so, we become fearful, afraid of the future. And the more fearful we become our tendency is to close our eyes lest we see too much, to close our ears lest we hear too much, to close our hearts lest we be affected too much. We drift into a living sleep. Fear closes us in, it closes us down, it paralyses us. And yet, the Spirit comes into our lives to transform our fear into its opposite. And the opposite of fear is love. Love opens us up; it opens us out; it awakens us; it opens our eyes, our ears, our hearts. The Spirit leads us out of fear into love. This is the foundational dynamism of the Gospel and of our discipleship of Christ.
And what is the bridge between fear and love? It is hope. Without hope we stay entrapped in our fear. But it is hope that prises open our fear and offers us something more. It offers us a future. As Pope Francis wrote a number of years ago:
“To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a heart that doesn’t lock itself into darkness, that doesn’t dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.
“Hope is the door that opens onto the future. Hope is a humble, hidden seed of life that, with time, will develop into a large tree. It is like some invisible yeast that allows the whole dough to grow, that brings flavor to all aspects of life.”[3]
Hope then is the affirmation that, whatever of the past, indeed whatever of the present, there is always the possibility of a new beginning. This is why the ancient Church writer, Gregory of Nyssa, could say of the Christian “who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, through beginnings that have no end.”[4] It was a wonderful affirmation that our faith in the Resurrection of Jesus means that even in the face of all that would suggest its denial, the victory has been won, the force of love is stronger than fear, life is stronger than death. We are people of hope. And because of that hope, we are those who can love rather than being encased by fear.
Yet, hope – beyond mere wishful or positive thinking – comes at a price. Something must die. I have to let go of something. I have to let go of my preference for fear. I have to let go of what I hold in my heart that imprisons me in the past or even in the present. Again, as Pope Francis says in the same address in 2017,
“Even the harsh judgment I hold in my heart against my brother or my sister, the open wound that was never cured, the offense that was never forgiven, the rancor that is only going to hurt me, are all instances of a fight that I carry within me, a flare deep in my heart that needs to be extinguished before it goes up in flames, leaving only ashes behind.”[5]
Today, as we begin our preparation for the great Festival of Easter in six weeks’ time, we are conscious of the ashes that we carry – the ash of bitterness, the ash of resentment, the ash of anger, the ash of regret, the ash that seeks vengeance upon someone, the ash of our hurts and failures. We mark our foreheads with this ash. For this is our reality. It is our past. Perhaps even our present. But it is not our future. Today we use ash; yet in six weeks’ time our ash transforms into fire, a living fire that promises something new.
May our affirmation of the Resurrection then so spark our hearts with fresh hope so that we bring light into a darkening world. This mission begins today as we allow hope to transform our fear into love; as we die to the past, and rise to the future.
[1] [1] Pope Francis, 30 June 2016.
[2] See Pope Francis, Video Message on the Occasion of the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada (26 April 2017) https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2017/documents/papa-francesco_20170426_videomessaggio-ted-2017.html
[3] Pope Francis, Video Message on the Occasion of the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada (26 April 2017)
[4] St Gregory of Nyssa, Hom. in Cant. 8: PG 44, 941C.
[5] Pope Francis, Video Message on the Occasion of the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada (26 April 2017)
