Abbot Brendan OSB
What are you going to do between the time you get these ashes and the time you actually become them? This is the question posed to each one of us in the rite of blessing and distribution of ashes. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Year after year, we come to this holy season of Lent and year after year, we are filled with good intentions. We review the ashes of our lives and resolve to do something about them. Somehow, despite all our good intentions, we seem to hold onto our ashes. We don’t give these ashes to God. In Lent, God is waiting to take the ashes of our lives and exchange them for His beauty.
The ashes we bless come from the burned palm branches we used last year on Palm Sunday. The palm branches from the triumphal entry of Jesus into the holy city of Jerusalem, amid acclaim from the crowd, are consumed by fire and become our ashes of repentance. How fitting this is. How many of our great schemes, begun with such fanfare and acclaim, end in ashes. How many of our relationships, hopes, dreams, come crashing down to earth in ruins.
Our ashes are the wounded parts of our lives, because we are dust and we will return to the dust, but God is waiting to take the ashes of our lives and exchange them for His beauty. He knows that they have come from the palm branches of our good intentions, as well as the mistakes and missteps we have taken along the road. So it is that the Prophet Joel speaks, “come back to me with all your heart, fasting, weeping, mourning. Let you hearts be broken not your garments torn, turn to the Lord your God again, for he is all tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness and ready to relent.”
Ashes are everywhere in our lives; give them to God this Lent. I think the hardest wounds to turn to the Lord are the ones we wounded ourselves with when we did stupid things. Take courage in the ointment of fasting, the power of prayer and the zeal of almsgiving and open your hands to release those ashes in particular.
Easter is on the horizon, so no gloomy faces, no hypocrisy, insincerity, or half measures. For we are Christians, made from the dust of the earth in the image and likeness of God and reborn in the waters of baptism. What are you going to do between the time you get these ashes and the time you actually become them?