It seems Ash Wednesday has unofficially become the most popular day of the year among Christians, at least in the hospital where I work. I usually give ashes to about 200 people, including patients, their families, and hospital staff. This is the only day that chaplains are so wanted and expected in every unit. I walk around the hospital and see lots of people whose foreheads are imposed with ashes on this very day. Then I feel quite troubled to see them. Why? Considering today’s gospel, I wonder if showing their foreheads imposed with ashes would be exactly what Jesus warns us about. Let me read what Jesus says in the gospel: “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them.”
I’ve been observing this behavior of leaving ashes in the foreheads or removing them afterwards. Why would some people walk around all the day long with ashes on their foreheads? What’s the psychology behind it? Can this practice be considered practicing one’s piety before others to be seen by them? What about those who remove the ashes right after? What is their psychology? Are they too embarrassed to reveal themselves as Christians? Which party would you associate with? Well, for me, I was in the first group of not removing ashes. Then I switched my team to removing ashes in my foreheads. We cannot possibly know all the reasons behind these two behaviors. Yet, there’s something common in both cases, which is that we may be preoccupied with unessential matters, that we may be too self-focused and self-conscious. This is where Jesus’s teaching drives from. Where is your heart looking at? Where is your heart striving for? There is a word for showing off one’s piety before others to be recognized. Can you guess what it is? It’s called “vainglory.” Vainglory is one of those terms that we actually don’t use in our daily lives. Vainglory comes from this Greek term, kenodoxia. Keno means empty whereas doxia means glory. Doxia sounds much familiar to us because it is the root word for doxology. Keno may be a bit unfamiliar, yet this is used in the New Testament to depict Jesus’s act of self-emptying, kenosis. What does vainglory mean then? Simply put, the image, the look, the reputation is everything. How you look and what others think of you matter. One’s intention of doing something good is not really to serve others but to serve oneself to look holy. Our culture is designed to encourage vainglory in all of us. This culture we have is that of vainglory. All the commercials and advertisements are made to implant some images that would make us better than how we look right now. The message is quite simple yet extremely powerful: Reinvent yourself with this new item. It tempts us to buy more. It convinces us that we’ll be better or more perfect if we have that product. All the marketing strategies in our time are based on this vice called ‘vainglory.’ And this vainglory is one of the seven capital vices, which are famously known as the seven deadly sins: envy, sloth, avarice/greed, wrath/anger, gluttony, lust, and vainglory. This vainglory is often confused with pride. Pride is the root of all these seven capital vices. Vainglory is one of the fruits of pride. Deep down in this spiritual vice of vainglory, there’s a strong desire and thirst for recognition and approval. We all desire some kind of approval and recognition from others. I confess before you that I do too! I feel quite happy when someone says all the hymns I selected last Sunday were just so wonderful! Our desire for acknowledgement from others is part of our human nature. What becomes problematic or what turns this desire into a spiritual vice of vainglory is when it becomes excessive! When our desire to be approved and recognized becomes excessive, vainglory is born. What’s more important here is what makes our desire excessive. What prompts us to be recognized more and more to the point where we disregard the very truth that God knows us as we are, accepts us as we are, and loves us as we are? I can think of two reasons why our desire for recognition becomes disordered. One is that we are too anxious and scared to reveal ourselves as we are. We somehow want to hide ourselves from others because we believe we are never good enough so that we need something else to cover up or gloss over. We choose not to believe God loves and embraces us as we are. And the other thing is that we are tempted to create our own image rather than bearing the image of God in us. I often talk about this chronic issue of spiritual amnesia. We keep forgetting we are created in the very image of God himself. This temptation to create our own image comes from our desire to control our own happiness, which we call “pride.” In today’s gospel lesson on this Ash Wednesday, the key point, however, is not so much about this spiritual vice of vainglory. Naming our excessive and disordered desire for recognition and approval as vainglory is one thing. And this spiritual practice of going deep down into our hearts to reflect on why I have that excessive desire is another. I would consider this case of vainglory as an example of how we can honestly reflect deeper into some of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours during this Lenten season. This spiritual practice that I invite all of us to begin during this Lent is really about letting go of our old selves and choosing to take the new life, the new self in Jesus Christ. This is the movement of dying and rising day by day. So, the essential message that we want to take away from the gospel is not a moral teaching of how not to be vainglorious but this phrase that Jesus repeatedly says: Father who sees in secret will reward you. We want to see what Father sees in secret which means we want to see ourselves truthfully before God, that we want to see ourselves and others the way God sees. It is my prayer for all of us here at Saint Agnes Church that God would give us the eyes that God himself sees in secret, the eyes unclouded by fear, anxiety, hate, or pride, that we see ourselves and others through the eyes of Jesus. And that will be our reward from him that we see ourselves and others as unconditionally loved by God in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. * This homily is inspired by Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung’s Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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