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.
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