LENT: Remember Man That Thou Art Dust

:: Because I Do Not Hope to Turn Again* ::

Here it is at last: Lent! Ash Wednesday opens this great Catholic season of fasting and abstinence. From today we discipline the spirit by denying the body. In the process we remind the intellect that the quality of our lives is measured not by bodily comforts and pleasure. Rather via torment and sacrifice, we suffer at last into truth.

:: And Place is Always and Only Place ::

How DREADNOUGHT longs for Lent. When the ashes spike my head it's sure proof that the Church calls us relentlessly. She pries us away from the trash and flash of contemporary living and shows us our mortality and true promise.

Remember Man That Thou Art Dust

Life often becomes too easy, our hearts become too fleshy and our egos fat. We become mired in the hedonism of self-regard. Especially in the comfortable West, banality reigns and it's too simple sometimes to just live, to get by.

:: And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee ::

I need to be reminded of pain and I need to suffer. During Lent we call down the God Who suffered on a tree, Whose flesh was torn and pierced, we call on the One who hung for us and for all sinners and ask Him to pierce us good. We aim to smile while we're beaten, because He did.

And Unto Dust Thou Shalt Return

Let good grow where excess shrinks away.

:: O My People ::

For same sex attracted men, especially, Ash Wednesday is a call to cast off arrogance and submit to Christ. Where we might be accustomed to speaking up, we should often be silent.

Turn Away From Sin and Return to the Gospel

Where we think we have the answer we should exercise obedience and prefer the Church's teaching to our own fuzzy ideas. Where bigots shout at us or beat us to death, we must demonstrate even greater love and compassion for others: especially those who'd do us harm. Abstinence means something for us too, like it does for all men. We mustn't masturbate as much,^ we must cast our eyes down when a guy checks us out, we mustn't always have hungry eyes at the gym. At least for this month, we must practice modesty and humility.

:: The Upshot ::

Ash Wednesday is today and Lent is here. Thank God Almighty that something, anything, comes at last to lift us out of the slop of self-aggrandisement.

:: Resources ::

- The Holy Father's Message for Lent, 2006;

- What DREADNOUGHT wrote last year:

"Many Catholics will be aware of the habit of putting aside the money one saves during a fast and donating it to feed the poor. In this manner Catholicism is not nihilistic, we are not trapped in some inverted hedonism, indeed the sado-masochism that some anti-Catholics see at every turn, but rather our suffering is given meaning, our sacrifice, like Christ's own, is purposive. It is one of those days when the suffering in our own hearts, the blackness and despair of life is matched and elevated by the liturgy/teachings of the Church."

"It is in this manner that Ash Wednesday makes Catholics better people, we admit our sins to sin no more, we strip back the slothful accretions of modern society so that solidarity and love become the order of the day and selfishness and death are vanquished."

"On Ash Wednesday and during Lent we mortify the flesh and rend the heart so that later we might merit changeless bodies and eternal peace. Far from a reason to giggle, the ashes remind us of the important things in life and indeed the most important thing in death."

*(Many subheads are taken from Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot).

^(To clarify because questions have been asked: The Church teaches that men shouldn't masturbate at all. DREADNOUGHT assents to the teaching of the Catholic Church. Please remember that I'm writing here for sinners as a sinner, not as a saint for saints. If you want perfection already attained, rather than an honest account of the struggle to achieve perfection, go read a hagiography or some hypocrite's blog).