Love, Lent, and a Letter

Peasant Times-Dispatch Issue 18

Ashes, Dust, Etc

Dear Readers,

I hope you all had a blessed Ash Wednesday! Some quick housekeeping:

I posted Episode 5 of the Podcast, featuring the wonderful

Walther Cantu

! Please check out the podcast and please check out Walther—he is a deserving and capable writer and his perspective on life and faith is worth your time. With this being Episode 5, Episode 2 has gone behind a paywall. If you’d like to listen to the old stuff, kindly consider a paid subscription? Otherwise don’t forget to check back on the 10th of each month for the latest podcast!

Last month I posted this PSA about Community Curation. I think it’s still worth keeping on your radar so check this out if you haven’t already!

Thank you as always for reading!

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Dear Readers,

Todays edition of the Peasant Times-Dispatch is going to be more of a letter from the editor. I am writing it on Fat Tuesday, because I couldn’t think of what this Edition should be about. Other writers will write eloquently and voluminously about the humility and meaning of the season. So I figured I would share my unadulterated thoughts. No lessons, no catechesis, no preaching from a high horse—just me talking to you, trying to figure out what’s on my mind. Please don’t hesitate to talk back—let’s make this a conversation and not just another ramble from ol’ Scoot.

I always consider Ash Wednesday to be a portentous day. It was portentous for the Israelites when they began their wanderings in the desert, and it’s portentous for us as we seek to prepare ourselves for Christ’s great sacrifice and His great resurrection. It’s always portentous personally because it is a good moment for reflection and pause about what I am doing and where I am going.

A friend called me the other day to ask some questions about lent for his journey and in that conversation I explained my ethos for the Lenten Sacrifice. A priest back in Virginia once told me that we should plan to keep our Lenten sacrifices forever. Let this be the first 40 days of a new lifetime habit. Then each year we improve our lives by one thing—leading to a life-long advance in holiness. I always really liked that mindset. It’s not just 40 days, it’s the first 40 days. The other thing I do for my own Lenten sacrifice is I contemplate one thing that I want to add to my life, that I need; one thing that I want to remove from my life that I don’t need. A positive and a negative penance.

But, how do we decide what those things are? To know what to add—I need to know what I’m missing from my life. To know what to take away, I need to know what’s there that I don’t need. Hence—introspection, reflection, portentous days.

Also—it could not escape my attention that Ash Wednesday fell on Valentines Day this year. A day already fraught with emotional peril for many, now we add the heavy contemplations of Ashes and Dust and penance. Probably not a good day to indulge in chocolate with your beloved.

Of course, this is not the first time Ash Wednesday and Valentines day have coincided, but I choose to read this as an expression of God’s love for us. For whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth; and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth¹. God gives us penances so we will remember His love for us and remedy our lives; so that we might remember our love for Him and do so joyfully.

The love of God, of course, being the all-permeating love that allows anyone to do anything; that holds reality in existence; that allows the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike. Valentines day and Ash Wednesday remind us that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son².

For me? This serves as a reminder that through a season of penance prescribed by the Church, I can carry my cross with a smile, because Christ has already carried His, and honestly He’s doing most of the heavy lifting for me anyway. This serves as a reminder that through a life-season of purgation that seems endless, I can carry my cross with a smile—because it doesn’t end at Calvary. It ends three days later—with an empty tomb, with a moved stone. With perplexed angels wondering why everyone is so surprised because “he told you he was going to do this.”³

I hope this lent finds you all on the first 40 days of the rest of your lives. I hope this Valentines day found you filled with the love of God. And while our eyes may be turned down as we struggle under our crosses—when you do look up, may your eyes be filled with Easter visions⁴, and all that’s good and glorious that comes after Calvary.

God love you!

-Scoot

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Thank you for reading!

Ad Jesum per Mariam

1. Hebrews 12:6

2. John 3:16

3. Matthew 28:5-6

4. “We are an Easter People, and Alleluia is our song” -Pope St. John Paul II