Joel 2:12-18
2 Cor 5:20 – 6:2
Mt 6:1-6.16-18
So, we are dust. We are dust and we shall return to dust. Today, we bless and receive ashes as a sign of our condition. We put ashes on ashes, dust on dust. This is more than a reminder of our mortality. This is a symbol, even a sacrament – at least, in a broader sense of the word: a symbolic action which realises a gift of grace – which gives spiritual insight and renews strength.
Sacraments come from Christ Himself. He is God made flesh. In His Incarnation God touched dust. God Himself became as close as possible to dust. “He humbled himself”, says St Paul, becoming a man, a slave, a crucified slave hanging on a cross, and a body in a tomb.
The movement of giving, or as we say in liturgical language, of imposing ashes reproduces the movement of God coming down towards dust. God is coming down to the ashes that I am. If you identify with the ashes – if you say: Yes, I am dust – then, you can be touched by God coming down to you in His Son. God humbles Himself in order to become one with you in your humility and then to lift you up to Himself. We are dust and this is good news, for God comes down to the ashes with the fulness of life of Christ’s resurrection. Humble yourself: you will be raised up. Die to sin: you will rise to divine life.
Through the symbol of the ashes, we enter a season of greater humility. The Church in her liturgy teaches us the movement of humility. It goes downwards, towards the dust. We are invited to acknowledge that we are men and women who come from dust and go towards dust. We follow the way of the Cross which leads to death, to the tomb, to ashes and to dust, in order to introduce us into the life of the resurrection. Of course, we would not choose this way if Jesus had not chosen it first. We follow Him. We cling to Him. We put our hand in His and let ourselves by guided by Him. We entrust our fears and our shame to His merciful Heart and we try to trust Him; to trust His love and His mercy; we try to hope. Lent is a season of desire and hope. We accept the ashes because we desire life, and we hope in Christ’s resurrection. We believe that Jesus has been raised from the dead by the Father and, therefore, we adhere to Jesus through faith with the hope of being done with death with Him once for all.
Forty days shall be given us to realize this more fully. Today, we are invited to think about dust, our own personal dust. Let us peacefully acknowledge that we are nothing. Let us, without fear, embrace our nothingness, even our insignificance. What do we have that we have not received? What are we that we have made by ourselves alone? What are our achievements, our successes, the things we are proud of if not gifts? How is it that we are making so much of ourselves when so many things remind us daily of our essential frailty, of our littleness and our unimportance, indeed of our nothingness, of the dust that we are?
Let us receive the ashes, which tell us so much about us and about God’s mercy, with sweetness and kindness of heart. Let us begin Lent gently – I mean: like people who are reconciled with their nothingness and peacefully trust God’s mercy. Like sinners who can look mercifully on themselves and on their brethren.
Today is a time of grace, a day of salvation. God comes to our dust and begins once more to raise us up gently into His life. Today, from our dust embraced by Jesus, we are created anew for a new life in His Spirit: a life of righteousness and mercy; a life of love of our brethren and of our God.