Throughout the Lenten season, we will post reflections for holy days and Sundays from this year’s Lenten reflection booklet, A Fast that Matters, which includes all-new reflections written by Frida Berrigan, and excerpts from past booklets, like the one posted below, written by Joyce Hollyday in 1991. Click here to see all reflections as they are posted as well as links to other Lenten resources on our Lent 2024 webpage.
If you are looking for a daily reflection booklet specially curated for Lent, you can still purchase and download this year’s e-booklet, A Fast that Matters: Reflections for Lent 2024. Read more about the booklet at this link or click here to order and download now.
REFLECTION FOR ASH WEDNESDAY, February 14, 2024
by Joyce Hollyday
from the 1991 Lenten reflection guide, “Desert Sojourn: Lent 1991”
Joel 2:12-18 | Psalm 51 | 2 Corinthians 5:20—6:2 | Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18
Have mercy on me O God according to your steadfast love; According to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions… create in me a clean heart, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Psalm 51:1, 10-12
The sun was ablaze of yellow near the eastern horizon, and even at the holy hour, heat radiated in waves from the deserts gravelly floor. Here and there a cactus intruded on the otherwise barren landscape. A small lizard skittered out of our way and under a pale rock.
We were people of faith from all over the country who were making a pilgrimage to the Nevada nuclear weapons test site, on the 40th anniversary of the US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Larger in area than the state of Rhode Island, this chunk of desert is pockmarked with craters from nuclear explosions.
The perimeter is marked in white, miles from the actual site. You cannot see it; you can only feel it. The feeling is eerie. And put it, beyond the mountain are preparations for the end of the world.
In this dark desert place, I understood why people of faith often head to the wilderness to seek God. In the barrenness – the emptiness – one is forced to abandon all else. As I walked, the image of the people of God wandering for 40 years in the wilderness came to mind; it was easy here to recognize the 40 years of moral wilderness in which our nation had been lost since the day we accepted the use of nuclear weapons.
On August 6, 1945, for thousands of people the past exploded, dreams evaporated, and the promise of a future melted away. We might have fallen on our knees, reached down into the ashes we had made of homes and lives, and spread them on our foreheads as a sign of contrition, begging for mercy for the terrible thing we had done. But instead, our nation saw the Hiroshima bomb as simply a starting gun in a mad race whose end is oblivion.
In this violence, we see a mirror of our own souls. We see exposed every temptation to power and control, to greed, to vengeance and the pronouncement of others as “enemy.” What pervades our nation cannot escape our souls.
In the symbol of the ashes this day, let us remember the conflagrations of our nation, and the smaller conflagrations in each of our hearts. We cry out for mercy, trusting God’s abundant love. We are confident to embark on the journey of Lent, knowing that we are forgiven, stepping forth in the faith that the end of the journey is the joy of salvation.
Joyce Hollyday spent 15 years as an editor at Sojourners magazine, which is where she was working when she wrote Pax Christi USA’s 1991 Lenten reflection booklet. Read more about Joyce and her lifetime of work for faith-centered justice at her website here.
Joyce,
I thank you. I thank Pax Christi. I thank Sojourners. I remember that same time. I remember Los Alamos. i feel weighed down, yet lifted up by your spirit in years of radical giving. I send a blessing.
As thoughts of all the conflicts and violence in this world weigh heavily on my shoulders, I am grateful for organizations like Pax Christi USA that keep hope alive by advocating for peace and justice and remind us that, as disciples of Christ, we must believe that our actions can make a difference in the fight for a more peaceful world. Thank you.
Thanks to all at Pax Christi for beginning Lent with Joyce’s reflection on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So much to repent, to remember and know of the tremendous violence embedded in our country. Thanks too for all the members of Pax Christi who continue to work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons and who have jointed with people around the world to achieve the beautiful reality of making nuclear weapons illegal. Together in faith and a belief in justice we continue on together. We journey on together this Lent and know our relationship with each other can create a different world.
Gratefully,
Jeanne Clark,OP