Another springtime. Another Ash Wednesday.

As we stand once more on the threshold of the great journey from Lent to Easter, it is appropriate to pause for a moment and reflect on the meaning of what lies before us.

In Ezekiel 37, we hear God declare his intention to act: “I am going to open your graves, O my people, and bring you up from your graves.” “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live and I will bring you back to your own land.”

This is what lies ahead of us: a journey from death to life, new life in the Spirit.

In Jewish culture of the time, the dead were buried in graves or tombs that were sealed with a heavy stone. When Jesus was raised, the stone was rolled away from his tomb just as previously he had commanded the stone to be rolled away from the grave of Lazarus.

There are areas of deadness in all our lives, parts of ourselves that lie buried beneath the weight of a heart turned to stone, trapped deep in the shadows.

As we pause before embarking on our journey, it is timely to ask ourselves where is there deadness in our lives? What needs to be released from the imprisoning weight of the stone: disappointments, old hurts, anger, fear, our struggle with suffering of all kinds?

What are the wounds in us that need to be healed this Lent? What do we need to bring on this journey to the transfiguring power of the cross?

But more importantly, do we want Jesus to roll away the stone? Are we prepared to let God act in our lives, raising what is dead to life, life in His Spirit, releasing us from darkness and oppression?

In a recent Sunday gospel, we heard a leper say to Jesus: “if you want to, you can cure me.” Lent is a time when we turn this around so that God now says to us: “I will cure you, if you want me to.” Do we want God to cure us? Will we surrender our wounds to His healing?

Ash Wednesday is an exciting time. God wants to act in us. He will bring us up from the grave, He will roll away the stone, He will lead us from darkness to light, from death to life. All things are possible in this new life of the Spirit.

We stand on the threshold of this great journey. God wants to roll away the stone that traps us and holds us back. Will we let him?

“Summer is over. Today is Lughna Day: the night stretches…”

August is a strange, ambivalent time. On the one hand, it is the culmination of summer, when the hopes of spring and the warmth of summer are realized in the fullness and plenty of harvest. A time when, in the words of Keats, the vines are ‘loaded and blessed’ with fruit, the cottage-trees ‘bend with apples’, the hazel shells are plumped and swollen and ‘all fruit is filled with ripeness to the core.’

On the other hand, it is a time of death and endings: the end of summer, the drawing in of autumn nights, the cessation of growth; the beginning of the long sleep of winter and the death of hope – at least for one more year.

Not surprising then that the ancient Celtic festival of Lughnasa is a mix of celebration and mourning.

Lughnasa is, of course, a celebration of the earth’s harvest, marked by feasts and games and dancing, as well as by religious rituals of thanksgiving. It is associated with hand-fasting and marriage, fertility and all that gives life. All the goodness and richness of life is celebrated and the sheer joy of being alive is affirmed.

Yet this celebration comes at a cost. Pre-Christian traditions tell us the origin of Lughnasa lies in a funeral feast for Tailtiu, the mother of Lugh, who died of exhaustion after clearing the land for agriculture. Other traditions speak of holding a wake for the corn god whose life is sacrificed for the sake of the harvest.

Death is part of life. Lughnasa acknowledges the cycle of life and seasons is based on death and rebirth. There is sadness as well as joy. All that flowers must fade; all that bears fruit must die. All things must pass and human kind itself is mortal. This is the deep truth of impermanence which lies at the heart of all great religions.

Yet, in the depths of the human heart, in that place where ‘deep calls to deep,’ there is a desire for something more than this, a desire that cannot be satisfied by the things of this world, a desire that can be met only by God, the Holy One who is in the world and yet transcends it.

Christian tradition tells us that this desire of ours is for God who is forever seeking us out in order to offer us his very self, to fill us with his love and draw us into his life. This he does through the person of Jesus Christ whose death and resurrection is the way that leads to life in all its fullness. It is as St. Augustine says:

“You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

At this time of Lughnasa, we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep for we, as humans, are rooted in this mortal life. Yet we remember always that we have been made for more and so we turn our eyes to the One who calls us to eternal life.