Ash Wednesday - Darkness

NB: On the morning of March 1st, a powerful storm blew through Carrollton, knocking out power for at least 12 hours. The morning Mass became the distribution of ashes and Holy Communion. This is the context in which this homily was composed in the afternoon. I half feared that I would be saying Mass by candlelight!

  Many of you experienced the darkness of the power outage today. Some of you may still be experiencing it, just as we are here in church. We never like it when these things happen. We feel weak, helpless, incapable of doing anything. We'd do anything to get rid of this feeling. And once the power returns, life goes on like normal. What if we experienced sin in this same way?

  Sin has the same effect upon our souls as the loss of electrical power. When we commit sin, we lose the light of Christ which we received in baptism and are plunged back into the darkness in which we were born. Only when the sin is removed from us does the light of Christ shine once more in our hearts and minds and we can return to our holy lives. But we must desire to return to this condition of freedom from sin, just as we must desire to return to living with electrical power once more. To wish to remain in sin is like wishing to remain in darkness, and who really wants to reject the light?

  The Church calls us to penance once more on this Ash Wednesday, to pray, to fast, to give alms, to discover once more the day of salvation. Repent, sinners, and return to the light! Weep over your sins and beg God for mercy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and be marked with ashes, the sign of humility and penance. Go to confession and be freed of the spiritual darkness in which you are currently stuck, so that Christ’s light may shine once more. Let us seek to make this Lent the opportunity to be freed of our sins so that we may joyfully receive the light of Christ once more at Easter, to rejoice that. We are not just sinners sitting in darkness, but repentant sinners moving towards the light.