Rend Your Hearts by Colleen O’Sullivan

Rend Your Hearts by Colleen O’Sullivan

Ash Wednesday

Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God.  For gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.  Perhaps he will again relent and leave behind him a blessing (Joel 2:13-14a)

A clean heart create for me, O God,

and a steadfast spirit renew within me.  (Psalm 51:12)

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  (2 Corinthians 5:20b)

Piety

Rend Your Heart
A Blessing for Ash Wednesday

-          Jan L. Richardson

To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear
that will return you

to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.

(from The Painted Prayerbook, ©Jan Richardson)

Study

On this Ash Wednesday, the beginning of our 2018 Lenten journey, we read once again the words of the prophet Joel:  Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God.  According to the online Oxford Dictionaries, to rend means “to tear (something) into pieces.”   God prefers a heart broken open over any of the outward things you and I might choose to do during Lent.

Think about the ways in which we use the image of a broken heart:  He/she tore a piece of my heart out.  I was heartbroken when he/she left me.  Living with a broken heart is extremely painful.  It bows us down under the weight of it.  Most all of us can recall experiences that have left us devastated and heartbroken.  But do we feel that same depth of emotion and sadness about our sins?

It’s not that God doesn’t appreciate the fasting and sacrificing we do during these 40 days.  God appreciates every little bit we can give to the poor.  God is happy to see us at Lenten preaching missions in our parishes and practicing special Lenten devotions.  But more than any of these, God desires our hearts.  God invites us to break open our hearts and to take an honest look at what dwells within.  What in the deepest recesses of our hearts separates us from God? 

Lent is a season for allowing God to reveal to us our sins.  It’s a time for trusting in God’s loving power to help us root out anything that keeps us from God.  It is equally a time for putting our faith in God’s promise to forgive our sins and desire to put our hearts back together, stronger than ever before, burning with love for the Lord.

Action

Look back over your life at all the ways in which God has revealed God’s great love for you.  Then consider how you have treated the Lord in return.  Rummage around in your heart and name what you see.  This may serve as the fodder you need for repentance during these 40 days.

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