Fix Me For My Dying Bed: Ash Wednesday
And now, take a few deep breaths, settle your body, mind, and heart into a quiet space and let’s begin with prayer.
Opening prayer: Heavenly Father, make me more like Jesus and more like the true self you’ve created as I savor your loving presence today. Please guide my thoughts and impressions by your Holy Spirit. Amen.
Look: End-of-life doula Michelle Thornhill meets with her client, Estella Stackhouse, 101, at Stackhouse’s home in Philadelphia, on Jan. 19., September Dawn Bottoms for TIME - Source
Listen: Fix Me, Jesus, The American Spiritual Ensemble - Lyrics | Spotify | YouTube
Read: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103:8-14; 2 Corinthians 5:20—6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her canopy.
Between the vestibule and the altar, let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ”
*
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
*
For he says,
“At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
Look, now is the acceptable time; look, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: in great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; in purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors and yet are true, as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and look—we are alive, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.
*
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
—Joel 2:15-17 * Psalm 51:1-2, 15-17 * 2 Corinthians 6:2b-10 * Matthew 6:1, 19-21
Pray: Book of Common Prayer, Collect for Ash Wednesday
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made, and you forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Do: Attend an Ash Wednesday service
If you live in the Fairfield County area of Connecticut, you are most welcome to join one of our services at Church of the Apostles (click the link for times).
You can read the scripture and prayers for the Ash Wednesday service in the Book of Common Prayer here.
Is this your first time to practice Lent? Here's a simple introduction.
You might also enjoy:
Ash Wednesday Explained via The Homely Hours
Living and Dying Palm: what my name has to do with Ash Wednesday [written in 2011]
Living and Dying Palm, part 2: the part where I talk about celebrating my 40th birthday on Ash Wednesday [written in 2011]
Sunday Scripture readings are taken from Year A of the Book of Common Prayer 2019 (Anglican Church of North America). Daily Scripture readings are taken from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and include both Morning and Evening Psalms (Year 1).