By Jean Rolex, CM
I would like to start our reflection with this question: What is the value of Ash Wednesday for missionaries? Knowing the value of Ash Wednesday is an ideal opportunity for missionaries to act on it, to work in a just and positive way for themselves and for others. In the Tradition of the Catholic Church, Ash Wednesday initiates the Lenten Season: “the way of holiness that leads us to the Paschal Christ”. It is a road to be travelled by all missionaries. Since the final destination of all missionaries is to reach the Paschal Christ, Evangeliser of the poor. From this perspective, the first value of this day is to lead the missionaries to celebrate Holy Easter. That is to say, to celebrate the passage “from this world that passes away to the world of the Father that does not pass away” (St. Augustine). Through this day also, the Church as Mother of the missionaries remembers that: “we are small and fragile, and that we cannot be proud, nor have hatred or selfishness”, since “we are dust and to dust we shall return” (Gen 3,19f.). To return to dust in this case expresses the precariousness and transience of the human being. It also expresses their situation as sinners. He is “the man-dust”, that is to say “the man who has turned away from God, who opposes God, who turns his back on his own being and condemns himself to nothingness”. But it must be recognised that the value of this day is not only to remind the missionaries of their condition of “man-dust”, but also to tell them that all is not lost. There is the possibility of returning to God. They have an appointment. An appointment with prayer, brotherly love and fasting.
Being summoned before eternity, St. Vincent not only responded favourably to God’s appointment, but also invited his missionaries to make their lives an appointment. An appointment with prayer, with fraternal love and with fasting. For St Vincent, prayer was everything. With it, everything was possible: “fatigue will be sweet and all work will be easy, the strong will relieve the weak, and the weak will love the strong and obtain greater strength from God; and so, Lord, your work will be done to your liking and for the edification of the Church, and the workers will multiply, attracted by the smell of so much charity” (III, 234). And later, he would say to his missionaries: “thanks to prayer all good things come to us” (XI, 285). St. Vincent was in favour of the idea that everything should come from our prayer. Even fraternal love, which consists in serving our brother with respect, cordiality, gentleness and devotion, because he represents for us the person of our Lord (cf. IX, 916). In speaking of fasting, St. Vincent referred to mortification as a means: “for an evangelical balance, for fraternal life and, above all, for evangelisation and the service of the poor”. He did not hesitate to recall that mortification is first of all a requirement of charity. It is sharing, it is communion with the suffering of the poor. For a missionary, to live in freedom means: to mortify his passions, since it is proper to mortification to give rest to the soul (cf. IX, 877).
Ash Wednesday has another value, because it shows the missionaries what God expects of them: conversion, change of life, a new beginning! For, as missionaries, we have sometimes made mistakes. We have lost the way of life and of the Kingdom. We have even compromised others in our sins. For that reason, this day is for us to stand again at the door. To return to God, to return to being the missionary that St. Vincent expects of us: consecrated entirely to the salvation of the people of the countryside, for the corporal and spiritual good of the poor (cf. I, 122-123). Missionaries who place themselves wholeheartedly in God’s hands to work with and assist the rural poor who are waiting for us (cf. XI, 316-317); followers of Christ, Missionary of the Father and Evangeliser of the poor, who seek to devote themselves with affection to serving the lowly, who are God’s favourites (cf. XI, 273). Truly, on this day, God waits for us to bend over this dust that we are, to give it the breath of life. Thus our “nothingness” is touched by the divine fullness. And from our nothingness a spark of life springs forth. The appointment with Ash Wednesday, then, is fundamentally the appointment with Life.
Indeed, being the appointment with life, Ash Wednesday becomes for missionaries a new opportunity to reflect on St. Paul’s exhortation to the Galatians: “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for if we do not lose heart, we will reap the rewards in due season. Therefore, while we have the opportunity, let us do good to all” (Gal 6:9-10a). Today more than ever, we need men and women of good. More generous missionaries who take this day as “a time for sowing good in view of the harvest”. But, St. Paul affirms: “To a poor sower, a poor harvest; to a generous sower, a bountiful harvest” (2 Cor 9:6). Sowing the seed of good in humanity. However, this invitation to sow the good “must not be seen as a burden, but as a grace with which the Creator wants us to be actively united to his fruitful magnanimity” (Pope Francis, 2022). (Pope Francis, 2022). May missionaries make themselves felt more where they are. Without forgetting that “in God no act of love is lost, no act of love, however small, no generous fatigue is lost.” (Evangelii Gaudium, 279).
Finally, this day is another ideal occasion for missionaries to bring “the fragrance of Christ to the world” (2 Cor 2:15). (2 Cor 2:15). May they be bearers of the fragrance of Christ in the world. Today, our world needs to perceive in us missionaries the fragrance of Christ that delights the sense of smell. A beautiful task for this day: “to be the fragrance of Christ”. Missionaries let us not tire of “being fragrance of Christ” insists Pope Francis (2022): “Faced with bitter disillusionment over so many broken dreams, faced with worry over the challenges that concern us, faced with discouragement over the poverty of our means, we are tempted to withdraw into our own individualistic selfishness and take refuge in indifference to the suffering of others.” But to be the fragrance of Christ, we have to “pray always without losing heart” (Lk 18,1) and return to the source of the charism that seduced us and let us allow ourselves to be seduced.
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References
Apostolic Exhortation Evangilium Gaudium (2013). On proclaiming the Gospel in today’s world. Retrieved from https://www.vatican.va
Pope Francis (2022). Message for Lent 2022. Retrieved from https://www.vatican.va/.
