Fr Abbot Brendan Coffee OSB
‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’
There is only one other time we hear these words in the liturgy and that is at the graveside and if we are the one being buried, it is too late at that point to do anything about it. So, ‘now is the favourable time, this is the day of salvation.’
We have heard how the Israelites returned to the Lord with fasting, weeping and mourning to reassert their identity as the people of God. As we begin the holy season of Lent, we prepare to do the same. However, we have to be very careful and very honest, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” We need to be particularly careful when trying to claim our identity as the people of God that we don’t make a performance out of it. The world is not a theatre and the God who made us won’t be applauding any kind of theatrical performance. Who is our audience in this season of Lent? ‘Our Father in heaven who sees all that is done in secret’.
Jesus tells us that we can easily become caught in the contradiction of audiences. On the outside we can appear to be seeking God, or trying to do what’s right; but on the inside we can be preoccupied with making a certain impression on other people.
It is not a question of whether we have kept the law or not, but whether the law has become so much ourselves that it has grown into the mystery of love. This then, is the point of Lent. ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return’. Take stock of reality and open your eyes to the mysterious relationship that we call mercy. Come face to face with being human, being dust and accept the love of the Lord.
It is mercy that gathers us here. God came into a broken world because He had mercy on us. We can choose to remain broken and indifferent. We can look at the hungry and say, “Not my problem,” we can look at the terrible conflict in Ukraine and think, “that’s very far away”; or we can view these victims of violence and declare, “There but for the mercy of God go I”. If we know anything about mercy, we know that mercy doesn’t make us any better than anybody else. We are in this together and mercy only makes sense when we share it with others. Who needs our help? The question is not difficult to answer. That is the invitation for us this Lent. We remember that we are dust, nothing more than dust and it is only by the mercy of God that we journey forward in the middle of the mess, which is this world of ours.