Sunday was the last Sunday before Lent this year, and that fact that it lands in March is indicative of how late Lent and Easter fall this year. I think it must have felt weird to Father at Mass on Sunday to still be in Ordinary Time, because he decided to give a homily about Ash Wednesday, and how it and Lent are coming up. Personally, I'm amused that he didn't wait until next Sunday, when he gets to wear purple, and still has just as many Sundays in Lent as usual, but regardless of that, it was a good homily and gave me something to think about.
One of the things I remember hearing a few times in seminary from the various priests I knew was that there had been a trend in the last decade or so of seeing more and more people come to Ash Wednesday and Good Friday services, while numbers for Christmas and Easter remained constant, or even dropped. While I can't speak to the overall veracity of this statistic, from my own empirical sense of my home parish in rural Alberta, I think this is true: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday have been "full" the last few years, more so than I remember growing up. So even if this isn't universally true in Canadian, North American, or worldwide culture, it seems to be true at least in Alberta... and I imagine that what's true there is fairly true in other parts of North America.
In any case, this brings up some interesting questions about *why* people are increasing attracted to Lenten message, but not to the Easter message. I can only hazard a guess, and undoubtedly it varies from case to case, but in general I imagine it has a lot to do with a growing dissatisfaction with the materiality-obsessed culture we live in, a tacit recognition that things do not bring happiness. At the same time, however, although we're recognising that prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are necessary remedies to our cancerous culture, we can't see beyond the pessimism this cancer has engendered. In other words, although more people are being driven to some form of faith, this faith is not inspiring them to hope, which is supposed to be inseparable from it.
Lent without Easter is like winter without Christmas (to use the Narnian metaphor). It misses the point. This is not to say that the penitential season and suffering are not important, and are *only* pre-Easter preparations, like having a small snack for lunch the afternoon of a turkey dinner. On the contrary, we *need* the Lenten experience if we are to share in the eternal Easter. If we do not recognise that we are craven, depraved sinners in need of repentance and salvation, we will never share in the Resurrection. Lent is crucial as a yearly reminder that "dust we are, and to dust we shall return," unless we "turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel." However, if we enter the wilderness with Christ at Ash Wednesday, and carry our own crosses with Him on Good Friday, then we hope that He will raise us with Him on Easter.
People who celebrate Easter but downplay Lent forget or deny that we need salvation; those who celebrate Lent and downplay Easter forget or deny that we can be saved.
In his homily on Sunday, Father drew attention to the fact that Ash Wednesday is not the first time in our Christian lives that we are marked on the forehead with the Sign of the Cross. The first time was at our baptisms, by the priest or deacon, and then by our parents and godparents, and each time we sign ourselves entering a Church, we recall that baptism. The imposition of ashes is another reminder of our baptisms. We are dust, and without salvation, we return inevitably to dust, but in our baptisms we are reborn into a living hope of salvation.
Father also pointed out that Ash Wednesday is the one day of the year when we walk back out into the world with a physical sign that we are Christians, that we have been to Church. Although the Ashes are a sign of our sinfulness, even of how we have sinned since our baptism, it is still a Sign of the Cross, and while the Cross is a sign of contradiction and death, a stumbling block and a foolishness, it is also a sign of hope, for it is by the Cross that we are saved, a given a chance of resurrection.
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