The Rev’d Ivica Gregurec
Ash Wednesday 2026
Readings: Isaiah 58:1-2; Ps 51:1-17; 2 Cor 5:20b-6:10; Matt 6:1-6,16-21
As I express the gratitude to the hosts of this year’s ecumenical Ash Wednesday Service, I also extend the nice greetings from our whole All Saints’ Parish community. Rev’d Lucy and I are both extremely happy to continue this long-lasting tradition and may our bonds of affection grow.
Thought Fr Rob and I are both in our positions (I might be senior for just a few weeks!), we all can say: Here we go again! It is Ash Wednesday!
Ash Wednesday is never about novelty. It is about the truth of who we are, the truth of what we have loved, and the truth of what we have avoided. The ashes we will receive do not explain anything; they simply tell the truth. We are fragile. We are finite. And we are deeply loved.
The readings today refuse to let us stay on the surface of Lent.
Through Isaiah, God speaks with uncomfortable clarity:
“Is this the fast that I choose?”
A fast that leaves injustice untouched, that sharpens divisions, that keeps the poor invisible, is no fast at all. Isaiah dismantles the idea that religion is about correct performance. Instead, the prophet describes a faith that loosens bonds, feeds the hungry, shelters the homeless, and restores communities. Lent, Isaiah insists, is not about turning inward only, but about turning outward truthfully.
Saint Paul continues this urgency in the second letter to the Corinthians:
“Be reconciled to God… now is the acceptable time.”
Not later. Not when life settles down. Not when the world is less complicated. Not when I finish the University, change the job or retire – to have more time. Now.
Paul speaks as one who knows suffering, contradiction, endurance, and hope all at once. His is not a polished spirituality, but a resilient one. A faith that survives pressure because it is rooted in grace, not success.
And then we come to the Gospel.
Jesus does not criticise prayer, fasting, or generosity. He assumes them. What he challenges is where we perform them and why.
“When you give… when you pray… when you fast…”
The question is not whether we practise faith, but who we are becoming as we do.
Jesus names the great temptation of religion: to be seen as good rather than to be made whole.
Maybe we can challenge ourselves this Lent:
Who are we when no one is watching?
What do we treasure when applause falls silent?
Where is our heart actually resting?
In a culture like ours – shaped by social media, by constant visibility, by performative outrage and performative virtue ( I confess, I already posted today on social media about Ash Wednesday), this Gospel feels uncomfortably current. Even good causes can become stages. Even justice can become branding. Jesus calls us back to integrity: a life where inner intention and outer action belong together.
We live in a land of extraordinary beauty and painful contradiction. We speak often of fairness, yet inequality grows. We honour the language of partnership, yet reconciliation remains incomplete (Does that maybe apply to our ecumenical journey together). We value wellbeing, yet many are exhausted, anxious, and unheard. Lent invites us not to despair over these tensions, but to stay present to them – to listen more carefully, to act more humbly, and to repent where we have benefited from silence.
In his recent Lenten letter Listening and Fasting: Lent as a Time for Conversion, Pope Leo XIV writes that fasting is not about self-punishment but about re-learning how to listen: listening to God, to the earth, and to those whose voices have been marginalised. Holy Father suggests that Lent becomes transformative only when it interrupts our certainties and creates space for encounter.
That insight resonates powerfully here. In Aotearoa, listening is not passive; it is courageous. It means hearing stories that unsettle us. It means allowing faith to be shaped by the cries of the land and the wisdom of its peoples. It means recognising that repentance is not weakness but truth-telling.
Pope Leo also reminds us that conversion is communal. We do not journey through Lent as isolated individuals striving for moral improvement. We walk together – Anglican and Catholic, Māori and Pākehā, seekers and sceptics – trusting that God is already at work among us.
That shared journey is a gift in an ecumenical gathering like this one.
I was thinking who could be a good person and example, that bridges two of our Christian traditions: Roman Catholic and Anglican. I thought of Richard Farrant, whose piece of music our choirs sang together as Introit. He worked and composed under Queen Mary I (the Catholic) and Elizabeth I (the Anglican one). With a skill specific to the musicians, he was able to navigate the complexities of time that was very harmful and is still contested. Lauder voice that continues to bridge our traditions is recently proclaimed Doctor of the Church, an Anglican priest and Catholic cardinal, St John Henry Newman, who once wrote:
“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”
Lent invites precisely that kind of faithful change – not a rejection of who we are, but a deeper alignment with who God is calling us to become.
To finalise, again, what could we try to do?
Perhaps to fast from certainty and practise curiosity.
Perhaps to pray less loudly and listen more attentively.
Perhaps to give not what is convenient, but what restores dignity.
Perhaps to place our treasure—not in reputation or control—but in compassion, courage, and hope.
Ash Wednesday does not demand heroes. It asks for honesty. It asks us to return – not with impressive achievements – but with open hands and willing hearts.
“Be reconciled to God,” Paul says.
“Return to me,” Isaiah echoes.
“Let go of false treasures,” Jesus urges.
And God, as always, meets us not with condemnation, but with mercy.
May this Lent be a time of real listening, gentle repentance, and renewed love – for God, for one another, and for this beautiful, wounded world we share.
Amen.
PS
All are welcome to read the Lenten message of pope Leo XIV:
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2026/02/13/260213d.html