Ash Wednesday

 

Ash Wednesday: What We are Given

It has always fascinated me that Ash Wednesday is so popular. In some places, the act of imposing ashes on the forehead of the faithful has become separated from the Mass of which the ashes are a part. Some churches use the distribution of ashes as a kind of outreach ministry to the public, complete with “drive through” ash distribution where you can get a cross of ashes on the forehead without ever having to leave your car. Who has time to attend Mass these days, especially on Wednesday?

As well-intentioned as these outreach methods are, they miss a fundamental point; convenience and accessibility have little to do with true evangelization. Good news that does not require conversion isn’t “good.” 

Simon Tugwell, in his book The Way of Imperfection, discusses why popularity isn’t as fundamental as conversion in our faith. He writes,

“Christianity has to be disappointing, precisely because it is not a mechanism for accomplishing all our human ambitions and aspirations, it is a mechanism for subjecting all things to the will of God. . . .When people turn away from the church, because they find more satisfaction elsewhere, it is important not to assume that we, as christians [sic], ought to be providing such satisfaction ourselves; it is much more urgent that we take yet another look at what is it that we have genuinely been given in the church.”

What have we been given? On Ash Wednesday, we are given the gift of remembering that “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But wait, aren’t we essentially body and soul, and isn’t it the body that returns to ashes while the soul ascends to heaven? This is a popular understanding of our soul and body, but we often forget the body after death, which contradicts what we affirm every Sunday in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting”. Our bodies are part of our resurrection. How that will happen is anyone’s guess, but I imagine God, who created us, will not find it particularly difficult to restore our bodies. While our bodies do “return to dust”, it is the dust of our creation. We return to the essential matter from which God created us. Ash Wednesday asks us to remember where we came from and from whom we came. Christ’s death and resurrection from the dead are integral to the imposition of ashes, and his sacrifice to reveal this “resurrection of the body” (Apostle’s Creed) is made real at all Masses. The resurrection is given to us even as the ashes are traced on our forehead as a cross. To focus on the ash without discerning the nature of the cross is to forget the gift given to us by Christ.

So, for those who go to Mass on Ash Wednesday:  Come for the ashes, but stay for the resurrection.