Ash Wednesday Reading

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning the the Lenten season. I will be abstaining from something I consider a comfort I so easily run to instead of Christ. I did not grow up observing Lent, but I now consider it a beautiful practice. Lent teaches me about Christ's sacrifice and about His grace for me and it prepares me to fully experience and revel in the celebration of his death and resurrection of for my sins that we observe on Easter.

But I will fail. And I think that is part of the experience of Lent. And that is where Grace comes in. It's 9:36 a.m. on Ash Wednesday, and already I am experiencing temptation. And in this temptation I am drawn closer to Christ. And that is why I observe Lent.

This year, as part of my daily devotions, I am reading "The Business of Heaven," which is a book of daily reading excerpts from the writings of C.S. Lewis. I love C.S. Lewis. In addition to daily writings, this book also has writings for religiously observed holidays. The following is the reading for Ash Wednesday.

What cannot be admitted - what must exist only as an undefeated but daily resisted enemy - is the idea of something that is 'our own,' some area in which we are to be 'out of school," on which God has no claim . . . I do not think any efforts of my own will can end once and for all this craving for limited liabilities, this fatal reservation. Only God can. I have good faith and hope He will. Of course, I don't mean that I can therefore, as they say, 'sit back.' What God does for us, He does in us. The process doing it will appear to me (and not falsely) to be the daily or hourly repeated exercise of my own will in renouncing this attitude, especially each morning, for it grows all over me like a new shell each night. Failures will be forgiven, it is acquiescence that is fatal, the permitted, regularized presence of an area in ourselves which we still claim for our own. We may never, this side of death, drive the invader out of our territory, but we must be in the Resistance, not in the Vichy government. And this, so far as I can yet see, must be begun again every day. Our morning prayer should be that in the Imitation: Da hodie pedecte incipere - grant me to make an unflawed beginning today, for I have done nothing yet.


I have read this a lot of times already. I'm still letting it sink in; I'm still seeking to fully understand it. I love that about Lewis! My prayer for Lent is the last words of this writing: Grant me to make an unflawed beginning today, for I have done nothing yet. And I know that nothing in my power will enable me to do that. It is only by Christ alone.