Ash Wednesday
March 9, 2011
12:15 PM Liturgy
J.A. Loftus, S.J.
In a few minutes we will, once again, sign ourselves with two
ancient and profound symbols: dust, or ashes, and the sign of the
cross. Alone, neither symbol is particularly cheery or uplifting.
Together, they spell a different story.
The late comedian, George Carlin, used to do a marvelous
stand-up routine about oxymorons (contradictory word-pairs,
things that don’t seem to go together). He talked of “giant shrimp,”
and “deafening silence,” or, his favorite one, “military intelligence.”
At the Vatican last year, Benedict XVI, added some word-play
of his own in his Ash Wednesday homily. He preached on the older
form for the distribution of ashes as a prayer for “precious dust.”
For the past forty years, or so, there have been two formulas
allowed for the distribution of ashes. The newer one is about
conversion, turning yourself around: “Turn away from sin, and be
faithful to the Gospel.” The older one is not used in many churches
anymore because it seemed to sound so grim. “Memento, homo,
quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.” (“Remember, man, that
thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return” [Gen 3: 19]).
It does sound grim, doesn’t it? But only if you stop with one
symbol, the dust. But that symbol is incomplete. When your
forehead is dusted it is dusted with another symbol: the sign of the
cross. “And that symbol declares that dust has been redeemed.
Redeemed not in some shadowy sense but with startling
realism….And so, ever since Bethlehem and Calvary, this speck of
humanity that is you, this is now ‘charged with the grandeur or
God.’ You are brothers and sisters of God-in-flesh. Your dust is
literally electric with God’s own life; your nothingness is filled with
God’s eternity. Your nothingness has Christ’s own shape” (Walter
Burghardt, S.J.).
We no longer have to despair at our ceaseless downward
movement to death. Because the sign of the cross cries to us that
death is not the end of our dust. We are redeemed dust!
So in tune with today’s gospel, for your Lenten penance this
year, please try to look redeemed. Practice an asceticism of
lightness, of humor, of life. Bring the smiling Christ, the joy of
redemption to just one man, or woman, or child this Lent. Please
look redeemed!
We are “precious dust” and have no fear we will ever be
anything else.