Deacon Vincent Dam

“LEARNING GOD’S REWARD IN THE LENTEN SEASON”

Ash Wednesday

Today we step into the most ancient season of the Church’s worship — the season of repentance, the season of returning to God. Long before the Church celebrated Advent or Christmas, Christians were already preparing for Easter with a period of fasting, prayer, and conversion. Lent is the earliest liturgical season because the Paschal Mystery is the heart of our faith, and the early Church understood that no one enters Easter casually. We must be led there by a renewed heart.

We begin this journey with ashes because we stand in continuity with Israel, the people of God. In Scripture, whenever God’s people returned to Him, they did so with ashes: Job, Daniel, Tamar, and the people of Nineveh all expressed repentance with dust upon their heads. Ashes were never meant to humiliate; they were meant to tell the truth — that we are dust, that life is fragile, and that only God can make us new. Jesus Himself accepted and affirmed these ancient signs. He did not discard the Jewish way of repentance; He fulfilled it. And so the Church continues this biblical practice, placing ashes on our foreheads as a public, ancient, grace-filled way of saying, “Lord, I am ready to return.”

But how do we return? How do we walk the path of repentance? Today the Church feeds us with four readings that form a single, powerful call.

First, the prophet Joel speaks with urgency and tenderness: “Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments.” God is not asking for dramatic displays. He is asking for honesty. He wants the heart — the place where sin begins and where healing must begin.

Psalm 51 gives us the voice of that honest heart. It is the most transparent prayer in Scripture: “Have mercy on me, O God… a clean heart create for me.” The psalmist does not hide, excuse, or negotiate. He stands before God in truth, trusting that mercy is greater than sin. This is the posture of Lent: not fear, but confidence in the God who restores joy to the repentant.

Saint Paul takes this call even deeper. He pleads with the Corinthians — and with us — “Be reconciled to God… now is the acceptable time.” Paul does not say, “Try harder.” He says, “Let yourselves be reconciled.” Lent is not a human achievement; it is a divine invitation. God is already leaning toward us, already offering grace, already ready to heal. Our task is simply to stop resisting.

But how does a repentant heart respond? How does conversion become visible? Jesus answers this in the Gospel. He does not give us vague spirituality. He gives us three concrete practices — almsgiving, prayer, and fasting — the ancient pillars of Israel’s repentance and the path He Himself walked. These are not optional extras. They are the shape of a heart returning to God.

And Jesus reveals something astonishing: the Father sees. The Father notices. The Father rewards. As Scripture scholar Ben Meyer observes, Jesus is not appealing to childish bribery but to the deep biblical truth that recompense is inseparable from the moral worth of good action. If we seek human praise, that is all we will receive — a fragile, passing reward. But if we act for God alone, our Father who sees in secret will give a reward that no human applause can match. Jesus is not discouraging good works; He is purifying them. He is freeing us from “prestige piety,” from the temptation to perform holiness rather than live it.

And here is the paradox: when we hide our piety, our light shines even brighter. When we pray, fast, and give alms for God alone, we become the “city on a mountain” without even trying. Our lives radiate God’s glory, not our own.

My dear brothers and sisters, today, as the ashes touch our foreheads, we begin the journey back to the Father — a journey of honesty, humility, and hope. We enter the forty days of Lent with Jesus, who Himself entered the desert for forty days of fasting and prayer, walking the same path Israel walked before Him: forty days for Moses on the mountain, forty days for Elijah on the journey to Horeb, forty years for God’s people in the wilderness. The Church gathers all of this into one season of renewal — forty days of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, forty days of letting God reshape the heart.

In this sense, the Lenten season is a marvelous invitation. It is God calling us back to Himself, calling us to the life we were made for, calling us to learn the reward He desires to give — the reward of mercy, the reward of a new heart, the reward of a life reconciled, and the reward of eternal life.
Amen.