It is very bad luck to speak of the unpleasantries of life during the Chinese New Year. It is a festive season meant to usher in all that is good and beautiful which is due to us throughout the year. Hence, no performing of any rites or utterance of any words that may be a source of a cursed year ahead.

Except that this fourth day of the Chinese New Year is also Ash Wednesday, the first day of our Lenten season. From celebration, there is an abrupt transition into fasting and abstinence. From a fixation on the beautiful, there is a sudden call from Holy Mother Church to a contemplation of one's transgressions.

The dissonance we feel on this occasion is probably a divine conspiracy.

We are inherently lovers of good news. But life is not all good news. There are the realities that we, if given a choice, choose to avoid; those like pain, suffering, sin and fallenness. If we had our choice, we would wish for a Chinese New Year celebration all year round with neither toil nor strife. But now, our attention is turned to ashes.

"Remember, O man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19).

But divine conspiracies always come with a twist. In religious language, we call it a "paradox", something that makes perfect sense only with much spiritual discernment and reflection.

Mother Church desires that we spend the next 40 days (excluding the Sundays, that is) contemplating upon the paradox of how authentic festivity and beauty can be found only through mourning and repentance. The climax of this discovery will then lead us, 40 days from now, to a profound realisation of how it took the devastating fall of man to bring about the glorious redemption of God.

But for now, perhaps it is time to put aside the festive joys of the Chinese New Year, and to begin mourning over the brokenness of our lives. As we dress ourselves with sackcloth and paint ourselves with ashes, we can then expect to soon be clothed with robes of righteousness and adorned with the glory of the resurrected Christ. The point is, without the former, there cannot be the latter.

Let us mourn, for we need a Saviour. Mourn not in helplessness but in hopefulness, for the Saviour will come. He will. For He has promised He would.