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One of the most powerful rituals I ever experienced was not one of the Church’s sacraments nor did it happen in a church building. It was a ritual I experienced on a Men’s Rite of Passage Retreat. One entire day of the retreat was dedicated to the topic of grief and how we experience it or, to our own detriment, avoid it. The ritual involved lots and lots of ashes. We laid in them, we knelt in them, we poured them over our entire body. 

At the center of the ritual space a Bible lay open to the Book of Lamentations. It was a day for men to do something that men have a hard time doing, to move from our head—the control tower of our body—to our heart. It was a day to openly grieve, to cry, to lament, to mourn all that was wrong with our personal lives and the world around us. We did it in sacred space, that is to say, we did it without the fear of any external voices from the past saying, “Men don’t cry,” or “suck it up,” or “move on.” At a particular point during the ritual, any man who wanted to, could speak aloud what was in his heart by saying: “I regret that…” or “I am sorry that…” or “I am saddened that…” or “I hate that…” The rest of us, without any judgment, without any need to agree, disagree, or correct what was being expressed simply responded with, “I hear you.” All we wanted to know is that we were heard. The ritual lasted well over 2 ½ hours and was so therapeutic that no one wanted to leave. 

Upon entering the ritual space, we were asked by the weaver, the retreat leader, to rend our clothes (to ditch our shirts, shoes, and socks and to only wear shorts) so as to feel the ashes on our skin. More importantly, we were asked to rend our hearts as the Prophet Joel speaks about in the first reading. To rend is to open, to tear apart, even violently. The men I was with really did rend their hearts. The honesty and humility in the first man to open his mouth and to admit he didn’t have it all together was not met with shock at all. Instead, it was seen as an invitation for each man to go to the same place of honesty and humility within himself and to open his heart. The honesty was both refreshing and liberating. 

So, we start Lent both at the head and on the head; the control tower in each of us. We end Lent, 40 days from now, at the feet. Today we mark each other’s heads with ashes. On Holy Thursday, sunset, we will do as Jesus asked us to do; we’ll wash each other’s feet. What will happen between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday? What will happen between the head and the time it takes to make our way down to our feet? Change? 

Change is good as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Lent is not a second chance at New Year’s resolutions. Change is what we do to ourselves. The motto of change is: Try a little harder. You can do it! A better word than “change” is conversion. Conversion is not what we do to ourselves; it’s what we allow God to do in us and through us. What we do to ourselves often does not have a lasting effect, although I’ve knew a few people who went “cold turkey” with giving up smoking, and I’ve known a few people who have lost weight and kept it off. I admire them for the positive change they’ve made for their own wellbeing. Conversion is deeper than change and always irreversible. What we allow God to do in us puts us on a path that we never think of going back on. Once converted, you never want to go back. 

True conversion asks something of us that mere change doesn’t dare. Change starts with us, a personal resolve to do better, and ends with us patting ourselves on the back. Conversion, by contrast, starts with God and ends with making a better world for others. We give alms as a symbol of all that God has given to us. We fast because we hunger for God and know we do not live by bread alone. We pray as a reminder of our bond to God that can never be broken. Let’s start Lent on our heads, as we always do. But let’s not stay there, otherwise Lent will be an exercise of self-gratification and self-congratulations. Instead, let us link our Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving with the needs of the world, so that the needy may experience the same hope, love and mercy of God that we do. 

Fr. Phil Mulligan