5 March 2025
"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also":
Ash Wednesday and the CHC
By Stefan Kaminski
Before the CHC was invented and its motto (the above words of Jesus as reported by Matthew) adopted by its Board of Trustees in 2012, these words closed the Roman Church’s Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday for a good 800 years, if not more.
On the strength of the long association of this saying with Ash Wednesday, it could be said that the start of Lent therefore also serves as the CHC’s “spiritual feast day”. I suspect this will not suffice to claim an exemption from fasting and abstinence for its incumbent Director.
However, the words do merit a brief reflection on this particular and very important day in the Church’s liturgical cycle. Even if this verse is no longer to be found in today’s Gospel reading, as per the present lectionary, the current Gospel reading has retained many of the same verses, but shifted forward to a little earlier in the chapter, so dropping verse 21. The essence of this verse therefore very much retains its thematic consistency with Ash Wednesday’s Gospel.
In a literal sense, the choice of these words could be seen as ironic for a charity whose first objective was the preservation of material goods. As I am sure is obvious to our readers, this would be to miss the point of the relics and religious artefacts that form the core of the Stonyhurst Collections.
Whether it be part of the bodily remains of a saint or an object directly associated with that saint, relics are venerated as the incarnate memorial of those persons who are now living with Christ, and whose same bodies served as a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19) on this earth. It is only by virtue of this sanctity, that one may hope for further graces to be channelled through the physical memorial of these saintly people who stand before the face of God.
Thus, properly-speaking, relics have no value for this world whatsoever. As an object, in terms of both what they represent (the saint) and what they mediate (grace), their orientation is heaven and their raison d’être is our own arrival therein.
The logic of this motto for our charity is therefore hopefully obvious: “treasuring” a relic for its ability to nurture the growth of our soul before God signals a heart that is focussed on heaven; whereas “treasuring” a relic for its earthly (i.e. monetary or historical) value signals the orientation of the heart to this earthly life.
What Christ has to offer in Matthew’s chapter 6, as part of the Sermon on the Mount, is precisely wisdom for orienting our lives towards heaven. And rather neatly, our CHC motto is immediately preceded by Jesus’ words on the three Lenten disciplines: prayer (verses 5-15), fasting (verses 16-18), and almsgiving (verses 1-4). All the more does this seem to justify claiming Ash Wednesday as our spiritual feast day!
The Lenten season is one of “putting to death whatever is worldly in us” (Col 3:5): it is a period of purgation, purification and preparation (a catchy summary for your children or students!). The two great historical references in the Old and New Testaments both involve long periods in the desert, a place where there is little bodily comfort and where one’s existence before God is given a raw reality. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are essentially about this exercising of our spiritual ‘muscles’ and the trimming down of our reliance on material wellbeing. They are about working towards heaven, rather than working for the world.
Each of these three disciplines, moreover, has a particular role in further disposing us to the three theological virtues. Prayer, which we examined extensively in last year’s blog and podcast series, should aid our faith, increasing our closeness to God and our sense of reliance on Him. Fasting should teach us to materially place our hope in the spiritual, rather than the material, realm, by denying to some extent what we desire through our body. Almsgiving builds us up in charity, as we give of what we have for the good of others: a small, practical expression of the highest form of love, which is the greatest of the virtues.
The start of Lent is a time not just for fixing on specific resolutions, but on meditating more broadly on the orientation of our heart, and to enact practices that will express a heavenly resolution.