Ash Wednesday
February 13, 2013
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
The Talmud is the great Jewish library of oral law and tradition. It is
the definitive compilation of the Rabbis interpretation of the sacred
scriptures of Israel. The Talmud teaches that every human being should
wear a jacket with two pockets. In one pocket, the rabbis say, we should
carry the message, “I am a worm and not even fully human.” In the other,
the rabbis teach, should be the message: “For me the world was made.”
Jewish wisdom has known for centuries that both sentiments are true
and are true at the same time: I am not yet fully human, and yet, for me, this
world was made.
I am but dust. But in the words of Pope Benedict, I am
indeed “precious dust.”
Christian wisdom provides 40 days out of each and every year to
internalize that message and so to come to the freedom won for all creation by
the life, death, and rising of Jesus Christ. We call these 40 days each year
Lent.
The words we will use in a few minutes are significant in their own
right. The older formula: “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you
shall return.” The newer formula: “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Both speak even to contemporary ears. Just watch for the number of people
you will encounter today signed with these same ashes. The old joke may
apply to many. You know: that all Catholics turn up on Ash Wednesday
because it’s one of the few days when you actually get something for nothing
from the church.”
(It also applies to getting palms and having your throat
blessed.)
But even more than the words, the simple gesture of signing each other
with ashes in the form of a cross speaks even more deeply to our hearts. And
there is something special here that does not require words.
These two signs, the ashes and the sign of the cross, may be the most
earthy, physical thing we ever do in church. It “grounds” people–whether
they realize it or not intellectually. It can’t help but ground us. And it is
“Holy Ground” that we bless and use today. It is, after all, ground, dust, ash
with which we sign ourselves. It is a reminder of just how important is the
physical, the earthly, the worldly to our salvation and our healing.
But the ashes are only part of the symbol.
When our foreheads are
dusted, they are dusted with another ancient and profound symbol: the sign
of the cross. That declares , loud and clear, that the dust has been redeemed,
is indeed precious. It is redeemed not in some shadowy sense but with
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startling realism....This speck of humanity that is you and me is now ‘charged
with the grandeur of God.’ We are brothers and sisters of God-in-flesh.
Your dust is literally electric with God’s own life; your nothingness has
Christ’s own shape” (Walter Burghardt, S.J.).
There is nothing sad about Lent at all. So take a hint from today’s
gospel: don’t go around looking sad. Look redeemed. Bring the smiling
Christ, the joy of redemption, to just one man, woman, or child this Lent.
Please looked redeemed.
Reach more often into your jacket pocket: You
may not be fully human yet, but for you this world is still being made,
be at peace as another Lent begins.
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And