Ash Wednesday
Below you will find a poem and a song, both chosen to help turn our thoughts and hearts toward the realization of our own mortality and the need for reconciliation with God, as well as the good news of the upside-down kingdom of Christ, where the humble and broken are raised and the proud and arrogant cast down. Let us mourn together, that we may also be comforted by our Lord, who holds our tears and our sorrows and weeps with us.
Ash Wednesday
Malcolm Guite
Receive this cross of ash upon your brow,
Brought from the burning of Palm Sunday’s cross.
The forests of the world are burning now
And you make late repentance for the loss.
But all the trees of God would clap their hands
The very stones themselves would shout and sing
If you could covenant to love these lands
And recognise in Christ their Lord and king.
He sees the slow destruction of those trees,
He weeps to see the ancient places burn,
And still you make what purchases you please,
And still to dust and ashes you return.
But Hope could rise from ashes even now
Beginning with this sign upon your brow.
source: Malcolm Guite, The Word in the Wilderness, 2014
Nunc tempus acceptabile
Fulget datum divinitus,
Ut sanet orbem languidum
Medela parsimoniae.
Christi decoro lumine
Dies salutis emicat,
Dum corda culpis saucia
Reformat abstinentia.
Hanc mente nos et corpore,
Deus, tenere perfice,
Ut appetamus prospero
Perenne pascha transitu.
Te rerum universitas,
Clemens, adoret, Trinitas,
Et nos novi per veniam
Novum canamus canticum.
Amen.
Today is the accepted time.
Christ’s healing light, the gift divine,
shines forth to save the penitent,
to wake the world by means of Lent.
The light of Christ will show the way
that leads to God’s salvation day.
The rigor of this fasting mends
the hearts that hateful sinning rends.
Keep all our minds and bodies true
in sacrifice, O God, to you,
that we may join, when Lents have ceased,
the everlasting Paschal feast.
Let all creation join to raise,
most gracious Trinity, your praise.
And when your love has made us new,
may we sing new songs, Lord, to you.
Amen.
Translation © 2006 Kathleen Pluth