ASH WEDNESDAY

 Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, a day in the midst of our working week. This day gets its name from the rite of the priest making the sign of the cross on our foreheads with ashes, as he says one of two alternative formulas. One of these is more than just a sobering reminder: “Remember, man, thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.” As complementing these words the priest may say the alternative encouraging formula: “Repent, and believe the Gospel.” Both these formulas express a challenge. This rite brings us down to earth. It is not meant in any way to humiliate us, but calls us to genuine humility. This virtue is often forgotten or dodged because our memory’s cunning tendency to evade what is uncomfortable and uncongenial to our pride and vanity, enticing us to indulge in every kind of fantasy and false notion of our grandeur! But, by reminding us of this virtue the rite of the ashes invites us to recognize in the candid light of truth the radical condition of being human. For ‘humility’, like ‘human’ or ‘humour’, are words derived from the common Latin root, humus, meaning soil.

This takes us back to our origins and also focuses on our high destiny, which are both implied by the call to remember who we are and called to be. We are reminded not only of being created from the dust of the earth like Adam the first human being, but also that we have been given an ennobled worth to be sharers in the divine nature (2 Pt 1:4). This is thanks to Christ, the Second Adam, who in obedience to the Father’s merciful design lowered or humbled himself to become one with us in all things, except sin, taking on our condition of being of the earth (humus); for this he was raised up and became the embodiment of our true grandeur (cf. Phil 2:6f.; Heb 4:15).

It is good to be recalled to this very realistic truth that though we are earthly creatures we’re not merely earthbound. Thanks to God’s mercy shown by Jesus Christ, death, which sin brought into the world, can’t hold us bound in the dust of the grave; nothing, in fact, can hold back God’s loving outreach to us. Jesus didn’t put us down, but lifted up our spirits: “you are the salt of the earth,” he said in the Sermon on the Mount, “you are the light of the world” (Mt 5:13,14). Remembering this is very salutary in restoring a healthy, balanced attitude regarding our quality to bring savour to the lives of all people and to enlighten them by the light of Christ, who went on to say: “Let you light so shine before others, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:16).

Ash Wednesday can be regarded as the most significant Remembrance Day of the year. For, while Remembrance Sunday in England or the International Holocaust Remembrance Day turns our thoughts and prayers to those who are dead, because of war, Ash Wednesday calls us to live realistically and fully the open-ended condition of the present. This condition isn’t one that is spoilt by looking back in regret or frustration about what went wrong. But it issues in a whole season of remembering and reliving the most significant narrative of God entry into humankind’s history to save us from continuing the disaster of being wrecked that began with disobedience to his design for our true welfare and happiness.

This time of remembering is most salutary, since it is a grace-filled season of growth in the gracious truth of genuine wholeness and health. Being called to re-member, especially during Lent we are impelled to respond to the desire of God our Father to unite us as members of Christ’s Mystical Body. Our response consists in allowing the Spirit of God to gather together or assemble into one community, all members of our human family, as the Ezekiel prophesized in the imagery of the dry bones turning to dust becoming enlivened by the breath of his Spirit of love.

It is most salutary since it involves caring properly about our body, not merely for our individual bodies, but, rather, also for other persons, who are members participating in the Body of Christ. This way of taking proper care is fostered by means of those three traditional practices of Lent: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. This trio intrinsically belongs together insofar as each of these springs from and is oriented towards learning the true meaning of love – a meaning that entails discovering the beauty of how to care.

Caring is anything but being anxious. Rather, it bespeaks an attitude of being trusting and grateful and generous. Each of these is expressed through prayer, fasting, almsgiving. Through exercising all three of these in harmony we entrust ourselves to God, to whom we are grateful for his gifts by joyfully and generously sharing them with others. In this way we are lead to realise the significantly deepest and fullest dimension of how to care, namely, turning, being converted, to Christ. He shows us God our Father’s loving care for the world. In providing the supreme gift of himself in the Eucharist he heals our carelessness about what really matters, supporting and accompanying our endeavours to heed our brothers’ and sisters’ needs and cultivate the wellbeing of creation.

This theme of genuine care is repeatedly expressed by T.S. Eliot in his poem Ash Wednesday. With rich allusions to the Scriptures, as well as to the poet Dante’s words about peace being in accord with God’s will (cf. The Divine Comedy: Il Paradiso, Canto III), this poem concludes with the following lovely prayer to Mary, who is our model in caring as the faithful “servant” of the Lord and “dispenser” of his divine mysteries to us:

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

                  And let my cry come unto Thee.

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