Mardi Gras, the traditional New Orleans pre-Lenten celebration, ended on Tuesday. In the days and weeks before Ash Wednesday, people who take part in the festivities wear intricate masks to parties and in parades.
During this season of Lent, God invites us to take off our masks. In our daily lives, we create barriers that hide our authentic selves from each other, and from God. We put on these masks because we are afrraid, and our deepest fear is that we aren’t good enough. We fear that if we let people get close to us, they will discover that we aren’t as charming, patient, loving, honest or generous as our masks portrays us, and so we really aren’t worthy of the love we long for.
And so we keep the people in our lives at a distance and keep our masks tightly in place because we doubt ourselves and are afraid that if we truly become vulnerable and open up our authentic selves, even God might find us unlovable.
In today’s readings, we are reminded of God’s love and invited to a true honesty. Rather than making a show out of fasting by wearing a sackcloth and calling attention to ourselves, God asks us to simply treat others more justly, share our bread with the hungry and shelter the homeless.
The chaos of Mardi Gras is over and in the quiet aftermath, we are invited into a deeper relationship with the one who loves our deepest, most authentic selves, more than we can imagine.
Maureen McCann Waldron
The most important part of my life is my family – Jim my husband of 47 years and our two children. Our daughter Katy, a banker here in Omaha, and her husband John, have three wonderful children: Charlotte, Daniel and Elizabeth Grace. Our son Jack and his wife, Ellie, have added to our joy with their sons, Peter and Joseph.
I think family life is an incredible way to find God, even in (or maybe I should say, especially in) the most frustrating or mundane moments.
I am a native of the East Coast after graduating in 1971 from Archbishop John Carroll High School in suburban Philadelphia. I graduated from Creighton University in 1975 with a degree in Journalism and spent most of the next 20 years in corporate public relations in Omaha. I returned to Creighton in the 1990s and completed a master’s degree in Christian Spirituality in 1998.
As our children were growing up, my favorite times were always family dinners at home when the four of us would talk about our days. But now that our kids are gone from home, my husband and I have rediscovered how nice it is to have a quiet dinner together. I also have a special place in my heart for family vacations when the kids were little and four of us were away from home together. It’s a joy to be with my growing family.
Writing a Daily Reflection is always a graced moment, because only with God’s help could I ever write one. I know my own life is hectic, disjointed and imperfect and I know most of us have lives like that. I usually write from that point of view and I always seem to find some sentence, some word in the readings that speaks right to me, in all of my imperfection. I hope that whatever I write is in some way supportive of others.
It’s an incredibly humbling experience to hear from someone who was touched by something I wrote. Whether the note is from someone across campus or across the world, it makes me realize how connected we are all in our longing to grow closer to God.
