Seven Weeks for the Soul: Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is February 17th this year, starting another season of Lent. This week offers an opportunity to slowly enter the season of Lent. The imposition of ashes can be accompanied with the words “Remember, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return,” words that, if we let them in, can also wonderfully concentrate the mind.
This week’s Lent retreat theme is Repentance. As we explore this theme, using the text from Seven Weeks for the Soul, may our minds and hearts concentrate on the graces we hope to receive this Lent.
When you are ready, start the retreat. The retreat is best viewed in full-screen mode, available by clicking the icon at bottom right. Options for sharing, embedding, and printing this retreat are also available through the bottom row of icons.
What is God calling you to this week? Share your reflections below.
24 retreat centers in the United States are affiliated with the Jesuits. All of them offer Ignatian retreats throughout the year. 
The Daily Examen is an excellent practice of Ignatian prayer. It will help you find the presence of God in everyday life.
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m so grateful that the heavenly Father has enabled me this Lenten resource and that I listened to the call to participate. May I be able to do the seven weeks faithfully. Thanks.
May I know if this is available in facebook so that I can invite my buddies? I remember last year, this is an event which I participated and also invited others.
Thanks and God bless your ministries.
As I am always looking forward for this kind of thing. Thank you and looking forward to participate as we enter into lent. Hope to share this with my friends so please give us more information. And hope it could also be an interactive to share thoughts and reflections about one’s own journey with lent.
United in prayers
Louisa, you found the place to share thoughts about your journey with Lent, particularly as they relate to the experience of this online retreat. You can share this retreat with your friends by sharing the link to this page (http://ignatianspirituality.com/lent/seven-weeks-for-the-soul-ash-wednesday) via e-mail or Facebook, or use the share feature at the end of the presentation itself each week to share via e-mail, Twitter, or embedding on your own site. Thank you (and thank you all participants) for joining in!
Lovely introductory music for the beginning of this retreat. In the picture the water drips from the leaf into the water and makes the circles – here as the ice melts on the trees in the morning, warmed by the rising sun, the drops are as bright as myriad diamonds, glistening and dazzling in the sunlight. Melt our hearts of stone! A great invitation to embark on this Lenten journey of Seven Weeks of the Soul! Many thanks for the invitation to all!
God is calling me to be kind and loving to subordinates who resented my decision, to be understanding about their feeling unappreciated and hurt, to do something in reparation, to make them feel loved, to pray for them and for their welfare.
I stand at the window before dawn…a new blanket of white winter snow covers the lifeless sleeping earth. My life in this moment yearns for newness and change…death to life. I am thankful for God’s gift of Lent…may my soul waken from it’s selfish desires and turn from foolish ways…to Christ…the lover of my soul.
I find the notion of ‘begging God’ a very difficult thing to grasp. In my readings of the Gospels I am never once aware of Jesus demanding such an activity.
Let me focus on the goodness of God in my life, so as to become God’s goodness in my small way, here, this week. Amen.
I feel the Lord pulling me in closer and closer to know and love him and spend more time with him.
God is calling me to open to His will and to be aware of His presence in every corners of mylife and the life of others.I wish to deepen my understanding of the goodness of God in mylife.He comes to call real people and not models.He loves us as we are.
God is full of goodness, so ‘overflowingly’ full that I, a great sinner, am always a recipient of His marvelous compassion and kindness… oftentimes from people who are His ‘angels’ in this world.
Now He is patiently calling me to really pray for more ways on how to pass on this Divine Goodness through me to others too.
Lord, I will let You be God to me and through me!
Thanks God that he reminds me to be patient with my 88 year-old mother. I will love her more and be patient in answering her repeated
questions.
I sense God drawing me to Himself with a deeper sense of surrendering my need to control and a greater awareness of my total dependence on God.
Perhaps this is my Lenten journey and not just for this week.
My God is calling me to complete honesty and trust; to let go and Let God…Let God be God and take care of all the theings I feel I should be micro managing…God is calling me to trust…
God is calling me to continue to allow Him to shine through me to the children in my care. I am grateful that He is there and willing to let me do this. He is ever present in my life, but sometimes I hold him too close, so as not to share Him with others. I want Him for just myself. But He came for all of us, and I am being called to give Him to all in my care, and all whom I meet, and all whom I love. Thank you God for being in my life.
This Lent I am staring down the throat of the Impossible. I believe God is calling me to trust Him that somehow, some way, with His help, all these responsibilities, all this work, will get done. He is calling me to apply every bit of talent and intelligence He has given me, even though I know full well it’s not enough, and trust Him to do the rest. He is calling me to have faith in the paradox that if I spend time quietly resting in Him, that time is not wasted, and the work that I *could* have been doing during that time won’t go undone.
On this first day of Lent, I find myself at a point of needing to allow God to fill me up…to heal the brokenness that I feel in so many areas of my life right now–marriage, family, ministry, and relationship with God. I know of God’s love for me in my head. I need to be open to God’s love and feel it in my heart, my soul. I need to let God be God, and be OK with not understanding everything that is going on right now. Let God be God and love me.
In reflecting on the retreat’s words, I feel God calling to me especially in the message, “Pray to know God’s tenderness and compassion in those moments for which you do not feel at all grateful at the time.” There are some such moments I need to remember to find God in, even when I’m not feeling grateful.
Tricia, I think many of us understand the stress of trying to do too much. Thank you for the reminder that resting in God is time well spent, even when the calendars and clocks call us to other responsibilities.
I would like to share a different celebration of Ash Wednesday in our school today. There were several containers of ashes provided to two pews. The person near the center aisle is first given the ashes. After which, s/he places the ashes to the person next to him/her repeating the words, “Turn away from sin and believe in the Gospel.”
I always give up something during Lent, and this time, it is facebook and to concentrate more on my studies. It is always difficult for me to concentrate. Last time, when I confessed my idleness in studies, the priest gave me a “penance”. Every time you sit at your table to study, imagine that it is an altar and you are offering your studies to God.”
Have a reflective Lenten Season, everyone!
What a wonderful clever idea for everyone to place the ashes on the person next to them. I really liked that idea, but I do not know if out pastor would …maybe I can ask for next year?
God is calling me to remember that He is God. He is the captain of my soul, my lover, my friend, my all in all. God is telling me that all that needs to be done will be done and not to fret over the busyness of the day, to steal away and reflect on His love and grace. God’s will be done in my life as I continue to focus on His promise to me and to do my part as He has given me direction to do.
I want to change my perspective of lent this time in my journey with God. Not in sackcloth and ashes but seeing those things that blocks me from seeing the “beauty in the things that God puts in front of me” and changing the way I think and judge as “not good”. I was pondering about the letter of Paul to the Corinthians 13 where he talked about Love and the figure of the cymbals. “love” is the image popping into me as I pray and I will try to understand it more in my journey of lent. Peace
I have just been assigned to pastor a very broken congregation that has slipped into hopelessness and despair. Yet they cling fiercely to their old ways while I cling with equal fierceness to the certainty that my way is the right way. I believe this Lent is a call for us together to be God’s goodness. Today, God’s goodness to me takes the form of this space of quiet and grace. I am thankful
I am still thankful and still consider myself blessed for HE has given me ample time to strengthen my Faith and in this lenten season together with His sufferings i am offering all the troubles and issues of my life now which is just an invisible dot of hurts as compared as to what He has suffered for us…mankind.
I love you Lord and forgive me for all my wrong doings and thank you for continuously loving me…
I am brought to this website not by chance. Each moment brings me closer to something I need to see. I am grateful for this site.
I am most grateful for the three beautiful healthy children that God gave us.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment and participate in this wonderful faith driven technology.
I am grateful for an adoring husband who loves me even with my flaws and imperfections.
I am grateful that my husband and I are both working, have income, food and a roof over our heads.
My calling this week or today was educating my children about Ash Wednesday, bringing them to Mass and letting them get ashes. They asked me many questions and I was glad. One of my children served at the Mass and we sat in the front for the first time in a while. We discussed the gospel. One thing I retained from the scripture was to not let other pity you while you fast, nor let others see you give alms or pray in public. I thought that was very interesting. I always have told my children to give yourself to others or help others should be so natural that it should be second nature….and not to worry about receiving a thank you. You will be thanked in heaven. But usually some one will notice here on this earth and when they do, accept the compliment graciously.
God is calling me to continue to serve my family, both the old and the young, to give of my time and to share
my treasures, to seek out the lonely and the poor. To spend time with him in prayer and to reflect, and respond to this word.
God is calling me simply to serve Him all the little things of the day. To be His hands and feet in this world. To be His voice. I have always been very shy and private about my faith, but He is asking me to share my heart so that others may know Him.
Pray for my relationship with my sister, Tracy and brother, Kevin
though they will not talk to me…I do care and wish the best for them and
would be there for them if they would call–I have called many times only
to be really told–no thank you
In Blessings that I can see my own errors and misgiving
Thank you God.
Terry
God is calling me to allow myself an open mind and a soft, receptive heart. I can get twisted up in the cacaphony of thinking, and forget the awareness of peace… God’s unfailing love and wisdom are my true sustenance.
God is calling me also to remember to serve life and to be on the look-out/out-look for opportunities to share the blessings and inherent goodness of life.
Thanks for creating this space of communion and light!