Homily: Ash Wednesday 2017 - Why Ashes?

Today we begin the penitential season in the life of the Church known as Lent.  We bless ashes, have them imposed on our foreheads, and hear the words “remember, you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”

Why Ashes? What do Ashes have to do with the Christian life? And why begin this Holy Season with this strange ritual?

For one, Ashes remind us of our humble beginnings. The first man, Adam, was fashioned by God from the dust—the dirt—of the ground. So, Ashes remind us not only that we were made by God, by why we were made by God: to know, love, and serve God. God made us to be faithful, to be full of life, to be full of love. So Ashes help us to reconnect to our beginnings and also our sacred purpose on this earth.

Ashes also remind us of that sad events which soon followed the creation of Adam and Eve—how Adam and Eve used their God given free will to act against their purpose. They were meant to be full of faith, full of life, full of love, but by eating the forbidden fruit, they poisoned their souls and the souls of all of their progeny. Disobeying God, they sought happiness not in God’s will, but in the empty promises of the devil. Because of original sin “to dust do we return”.

So Ashes remind us that we were made by God, but also how the poison of sin brings death. Sin always is a falling short of the people God made us to be.

So as a sign of humility and a sign of repentance, at the beginning of this Holy Season, we mark ourselves with ashes as sinners in need of a savior, sinners in need of mercy.

As the ashes are blessed today, listen very closely to the prayer of blessing. The prayer will recall how God does not desire the death of sinners, but their conversion, and how this act of imposing ashes on our foreheads is sign of our desire for the pardon of our sins and newness of life through Christ.

As you come forward for this beautiful and ancient sacramental, ask God to bring you to repentance for all of your sins, ask God to help you seek conversion, and to help you this Lent to remain steadfast in your Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, that you may be filled with the new life of Christ for the glory of God and salvation of souls.