Burying Our Alleluia
As we prepare to enter the Lenten season, a penitential season of fasting and prayer, the time has come to bury our Alleluia. This word–it is simply the Hebrew word transliterated into English–means Praise the Lord. And yes while it is always good and right to praise the Lord regardless of the Church calendar, one way we live out our Lenten fast is by withholding this goodness, at least for a while.
As absence makes the heart grow fonder, restraining ourselves from this word which is typically heard on the lips of the parishioner in response to the goodness of God, is meant to prompt us in two ways. First, the reason we "fast" from it is that we might be reminded of the state of our souls. When in worship we encounter those times when we typically respond with Alleluia, but now we refrain from doing so, we are reminded what time it is: it is the time of heartfelt reckoning of the ways we seek to be sustained and affirmed by all means other than the Lord. Jesus, as he was tempted in the wilderness for forty days and nights–the Lenten season reflects this–was sustained not by bread, nor by Satan's deceitful words. He was sustained by the substantial food of the Lord through the Holy Scriptures.
The second prompt is that we would desire the restoration of Alleluia which will happen at Easter, the feast of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ when He overcame Satan, Sin, and Death. So then the fasting from this word is meant to lift up our eyes in hope to Jesus Christ, for He alone is our salvation. He alone is our Food. He alone is our Healer. He alone is to be our Love.
The invitation then on this eve of Ash Wednesday is to prepare yourselves–heart, soul, and body–for entering the valley of Lent. This is not a time, as Jesus teaches in Matthew 6, to put on gloomy faces that others will hopefully see how much we are fasting (however we might participating in that good activity). Rather, it is a time to take stock of the storehouse of our heart, discarding the old, past-expiration date, rotten items we find therein, that we might be filled more with heavenly provisions, namely faith, hope, and love.