The imposition of ashes will take a slightly different form this year from what we’re accustomed to. The Vatican has instructed that instead of making the sign of the cross on the forehead, ashes are to be sprinkled lightly on the top of each person’s head, in silence. As I mentioned last weekend, this is actually a way that ashes are imposed throughout much of the world even in normal years, including in Rome. So please don’t worry that we’re doing something made up or non-traditional. We’re not. It’s a matter of taking advantage of a reasonable opportunity to be a little less hands-on this year, for obvious reasons, by adopting a practice that much of the world does anyway. And while I think we all will miss the beautiful witness and symbolism of the cross being etched right out in front this year, I’m actually grateful that this gives us the opportunity to consider the deeper meaning and the powerful beauty of this incredible ritual, which is one of our most compelling and popular ceremonies of the entire Church Year, and rightly so.
The imposition of ashes is about humility. Using ashes as a symbol of humility is quite ancient. Job, in the Old Testament, sprinkled his body with ashes. The penitent man of Psalm 102 describes mixing ashes with his bread. We’re all familiar with the image of “sackcloth and ashes.” In fact, it’s a bit of a stretch even to call ashes symbolic. It’s actually more literal than symbolic. Because the word “humility” means, “earthy, dusty, dirty.” The Latin word humus means dirt. We are literally humbling ourselves by placing dirt on our heads. Those exceptional words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” are a reminder of how fragile our life on this earth truly is. When we consider the shortness of life and the weakness of the flesh, we’re always presented with two extreme options, let’s call them pagan options, and one Christian option. Faced with our mortality, the standard non-Christian responses are stoicism and hedonism. You could be a stoic, and just decide that you want nothing to do with the flesh, try to transcend it all, and just not concern yourself with the material world at all. It is what it is, so...whatever. The other pagan option is to be a hedonist. Since life is fragile, squeeze every little bit of physical, material pleasure out of your life that you can. Basically drown out your thoughts of mortality until you just can’t any more.
Both of these solutions are unsatisfactory, however, because neither one actually takes the created world seriously. Whether your solution is to forget about material concerns altogether or to do whatever you feel like in any particular moment, either way, you’re not really taking this world seriously. But we do. We think that this world is not only meaningful, it’s redeemable. So when we say, “I am dust, and to dust I shall return,” I acknowledge a truth: the truth of my frailty, and my sin, and my mortality. But I also accept this reality with joy, because of another truth expressed so beautifully in the Book of Wisdom: “You, O Lord, have mercy on all, and you hate none of those things that you have created. You pardon the sins of men, and draw them to repentance, and you pardon them, for you are the Lord our God.” The fact that we acknowledge our sin means that we can acknowledge our redemption as well. The fact that our sin matters, means that salvation matters. And as real as our weaknesses are, God’s mercy and love are the most real things of them all. That’s what today is about. So as we cast humility upon our heads today, we rejoice that our weakness is made strong, our mortality made immortal, and our sins made white as snow, all by the love of Christ.