Even the darkest moments of the liturgy are filled with joy, and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the lenten fast, is a day of happiness, a Christian feast.
Interpretation
Even in challenging times, there can be joy and celebration in faith.
Thomas Merton highlights the paradox of joy in solemnity, suggesting that during Ash Wednesday, a day traditionally seen as a time of reflection and fasting, one can still find happiness. This insight emphasizes that spiritual observances, even during periods of penance, can bring a sense of joy and community within the Christian faith.
In practice
During a church service, I might use this quote to remind the congregation that there can be joy in their faith even during difficult times.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.
I have never changed my message. I preach the Bible, and I preach it with authority.
The devotion which God sends to the succor of His Church and of the nations at the present time is the devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist. It is the highest of all devotions.
The encouragement and the deepening of Eucharistic worship are proofs of the authentic renewal which the Council set itself as an aim and of which they are the central point.
Do not flatter yourselves: if you go to places of worship merely to look about you or to hear music, you are not worshipping God.
You could remove the powerful preaching from our church and it would still continue. You could remove the administration of pastoral care through the cell group system and the church would still continue. But if you remove the prayer life of our church it would collapse.
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