It may seem odd to think of joy on Ash Wednesday. The readings this day lean into what we would traditionally associate with a season of fasting: a long list of privations and human limitations. Where’s the joy in that? 

As you’ll discover this season, these experiences often help us recognize joy when we truly experience it. Joy does not require suffering or disappointment or austerity. But when we live through times like those, we know how to appreciate times of joy’s sudden abundance

In Psalm 51, the psalmist feels the kind of obvious, embarrassing humiliation that comes from recognizing what we have done wrong. The writer feels “born guilty,” filthy, dirty, crushed (5-8). What joy comes from the healing mercy of forgiveness! It is like restoration, or newfound wisdom, or the return of the lost, or being able to sing again (12-15).

Then, in the gospel text from Matthew, Jesus calls the faithful to hide their obvious shows of piety. What joy comes from washing your face to remove the signs of fasting? It is like a secret reward, the quiet delight in the knowledge that the God “who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:18).

In all the Ash Wednesday readings, we find a biblical roadmap to joy: it follows an experience of God’s absence and emerges the moment we rediscover our faith. Joy follows the painful, shocking recognition of our abject sin and emerges as we receive God’s forgiveness. Joy follows occasions of social jeopardy and personal calamity and bursts forth when we harvest unshakeable life in a moment that might have devastated us once.  

We are not meant to seek out painful and life-endangering experiences in order to find the joy that comes from God. It is enough to name them honestly. Our temporal misery, our bodily suffering, our grief – none of it is required for joy. These experiences simply help us recognize and appreciate and celebrate that which is worthy of true joy.