thoughts from ash wednesday

 Lent has begun.  Ash Wednesday was its normal roller coaster of emotions.  Our parish offered 7 total services in all, 6 Masses and 1 Prayer Service with Ashes.  As usual, all were well attended.  It's not standing room only as it once was, but there were good crowds indeed!  Yet, my sarcastic radar gets turned up almost every year.  Why?  Because I don't understand the concept of simply waltzing into the church AFTER or between services to ask for ashes.  In other words, what I hear is "Father, it's not important to me to have time to spend in prayer with the community.  My life is too busy for that, but I need to look like it matters.  Just give them to me so I can keep moving.  Isn't it enough that I made the effort to even get here on this important day to show that I know the tradition?"

Last evening, after the 5pm Mass at which I was the celebrant, there were several people who came late and missed the distribution of ashes.  It actually happened at all of the services, but after the 5pm, I was approached in the same manner as others.  My response was that the next Mass started at 7pm.  "Oh.  Well can I just get ashes?"  I'm not in favor of doing it.  However, someone asked if they could give some of that group of people their ashes.  "Sure."  But it was a mad rush and people simply left.  One man, however, whom I told he had to wait went forward, received the ashes, and gave me a look that simply was satanic in expression.  It was a look that said "so much for your authority."

But this is an annual thing.

We make sure that the school children attend Mass that day even though it's not even an obligatory day in the Church calendar.  That's right.  Ash Wednesday is NOT a holy day of obligation.  It's a tradition that the Church has held for centuries.  It's an important tradition because it marks the beginning of the 40 days and the ashes are meant to remind us that when at last we die, that is what our bodies with deteriorate back to.  It takes time for that to happen and the chemicals which funeral directors use slow down that process.  But eventually, our fleshy material loses its water and breaks down to dust particles -- which ironically, are particles made up of material from the outer cosmos.

And the reason we die and break down is due to our sinful nature.  I wrote about that yesterday.  I think that verse in Genesis will stay with me for a long time when God says in Chapter 8, verse 21c "since the desires of the human heart are evil from youth."  The point, however, is that God created us to be good as we were literally made in his divine image.