Ash Wednesday

It seems as though the joy of the Christmas season just ended, and already Lent is looming. Ash Wednesday arrives and hits us squarely between the eyes, forcing us to face our own mortality and sinfulness.

At Mass on Wednesday, we will hear Scripture readings that are urgent and vivid. The Prophet Joel tells us that God wants us to return to Him with our whole hearts and to acknowledge our sinfulness with fasting and weeping and mourning. In the Gospel reading, Jesus reminds us that our fasting, our prayers, and our almsgiving are important ways to atone for our sinfulness, but only when we do so humbly, in a way that only God sees what we’re doing: Jesus criticizes pious displays, not pious actions.

We have ashes rubbed into our foreheads, ashes from the palms that we waved last year on Palm Sunday. It’s a tough day, but take heart! This is one religious day that won’t fall into the clutches of retailers. There aren’t any Hallmark cards celebrating sin and suffering, or shop windows decked out with sackcloth and ashes.

On Ash Wednesday, we come to church to kneel, to pray, and to ask God’s forgiveness, surrounded by other sinners. Church tradition sets aside Ash Wednesday as a particular day to address sin and death. We are all sinners, no better and no worse than our brothers and sisters. This is a day to acknowledge that, to ponder our mortality, and repent.

Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about death. But death is the great equalizer. In death there are no presidents of corporations, no maintenance workers, no one percent versus ninety-nine percent. All of us are in the hands of our loving God – that's it. The trinkets of this world – honor, wealth, pleasure and power – are but dust and ashes. When we remember “to dust we shall return,” we recall that we are made for more than the here and now. We are made for life with God – now and forever.

Ash Wednesday is the gateway to Lent. We have forty days or so to open ourselves up to God and examine ourselves in the presence of the One who created us, knows us, and loves us. We are dust, but with God’s grace we can learn to live this life more fully, embrace our sinfulness, and allow God to transform us.

Ash Wednesday and the six weeks of Lent that follow give us an opportunity – once again – to turn away from sin, and follow the gospel.