Ash Wednesday

Both the Old Testament and Epistle readings for today (in the Papist lectionary, anyway) emphasize that now is actually a pretty good time to start being good. Joel 2:12-13, in Coverdale's translation, reads:

¹²Now therfore saieth the LORDE: Turne you vnto me with all youre hertes, with fastinge, wepynge and mournynge: ¹³rente youre hertes, & not youre clothes. Turne you vnto the LORDE youre God, for he is gracious & mercifull, longe sufferynge & of greate compassion: & redy to pardone wickednes.

(Who says centuries-old translations aren't acceptable? With the possible exceptions of "rend" and "long-suffering", I daresay the passage is perfectly understandable, even to the average American. Bible translations that dumb-down the language — viz., the NIV, the NAB, et alia, ad nauseam — are only greasing the slippery slope towards illiteracy.) Consider also part of today's Epistle, from 2 Corinthians 6:1-2:

¹We as helpers therfore exhorte you, that ye receaue not ye grace of God in vayne. ²For he sayeth: I haue herde the in the tyme accepted, and in the daye of saluacion haue I succoured the. Beholde, now is the accepted tyme, now is the daye of saluacion.

(Again, no problems with the language except perhaps "exhort" and "succored", but certainly every college graduate should know these words.)

To these exhortations let us add that of John Donne. They don't make many Anglicans like John Donne anymore; this is a pity. In a sermon preached to Queen Anne (James I's consort, not the later queen regnant), he echoes a passage from Augustine's Confessions:

Yet if we have omitted our first early, our youth, there is one early left for us; this minute; seek Christ early, now, now, as soon as his Spirit begins to shine upon your hearts. Now as soon as you begin your day of Regeneration, seek him the first minute of this day, for you know not whether this day shall have two minutes or no, that is, whether his Spirit, that descends upon you now, will tarry and rest upon you or not, as it did upon Christ at his baptisme.

Therefore shall every one that is godlie make his Prayer unto thee O God, in a time when thou may'st be found: we acknowledg this to be that time, and we come to thee now early, with the confession of thy servant Augustine, sero te amavi pulchritudo tam antiqua, tam nova; O glorious beauty, infinitely reverend, infinitely fresh and young, we come late to thy love, if we consider the past daies of our lives, but early if thou beest pleased to reckon with us from this houre of the shining of thy grace upon us; and therefore O God, as thou hast brought us safely to the beginning of this day, as thou hast not given us over to a finall perishing in the works of night and darkness, as thou hast brought us to the beginning of this day of grace, so defend us in the same with thy mighty power, and grant that this day, this day of thy visitation, we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger, no such sinne, no such danger as may separate us from thee, or frustrate us of our hopes in that eternall kingdom which thy Sonne our saviour Christ Jesus hath purchased for us with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood.