Ash Wednesday Warnings

It never ceases to amaze me every year that on the day when the most people are the most public with their faith – walking around with ashes on their foreheads – the Gospel reading of the day begins with this warning:

Beware of practicing your piety before men
in order to be seen by them;

for then
you will have no reward
from your Father who is in heaven

The point is not to hide one’s faith – our Lord elsewhere commands us to be the light of the world and not to be hidden – rather, the point is very much like T. S. Eliot’s famous line (quoted yesterday):

The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

There is certainly nothing wrong with practicing piety, performing righteous actions or giving alms. Nor is there anything intrinsically wrong with doing good deeds where other people might happen to witness them. The problem is when we make a show of our faith just for show: just for the purpose of being seen.

Our focus always needs to be on God and on doing what is right. We should not be worrying about impressing other people with our “righteousness,” but rather on living out our faith fully in the sight of God. As media people would put it: our target audience is the Lord.

That is not to say that we should be unaware of how others see us or that we should “neglect our appearance.”

In this regard, comments made last year by Francis Cardinal Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, may be helpful.

As reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cardinal Arinze said that prayer and fasting are good, but not when they begin to interfere with the joyful completion of the ordinary God-given duties of family life, work and service to the church.

"Suppose I, as a bishop or cardinal, said I will not take breakfast, I will not take lunch," he said. "Then I have a headache. Then I am nervous. People come to me in my office and I sting them like an electric wire.

"Then it is better to take a good meal and do my work."

The Cardinal went on to say that if family relationships suffer because of severe fasting, "you tell me you are doing penance and I tell you you are stupid."

This dovetails well with the words of our Lord from today’s Gospel:

Do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.
They neglect their appearance,
so that they may appear to others to be fasting.

Amen, I say to you,
they have received their reward.

But when you fast,
anoint your head and wash your face,
so that you may not appear to be fasting,
except to your Father who is hidden.

And your Father who sees what is hidden
will repay you.