This day, year to year, proves to be among the most noteworthy in the Church for widespread acts of piety and religion. More people come to Mass on Ash Wednesday than practically any other day. We love Ash Wednesday. It obviously never falls conveniently on a weekend, nor is it in fact a Holy Day of Obligation, believe it or not. And yet, this day: this stark and powerfully symbolic and mysterious liturgy of the Church draws the hearts of so many of us, so powerfully: draws us to prayer, to penitence, and to Divine Worship.
Why? Why is this day so meaningful to us? Why does it touch us so deeply? I think it’s because this is the Feast of the Realistic: the Feast of Acknowledging the Truth: of abandoning our defenses, of putting aside our excuses, and simply admitting the Truth: I am a sinner. Despite my best efforts and my best intentions, I still find myself to be weak and unreliable. My life is fragile, and before too very long at all, I will be gone. Today, at least, I will look upon my human condition as it actually is. I am dust, and to dust I shall return. This resonates with everyone in some way: resonates with our innermost experience, with our most profound knowledge that we keep hidden so often, even sometimes from ourselves, out of fear and insecurity: we are not perfect, and we are in profound need of help and of mercy. And so, on this day, receiving ashes, we enter upon the season appointed for our spiritual purification: through this remarkable sign of placing ashes upon our head, this sign which is ancient and biblical. It expresses the reality of the human condition, affected as it so deeply by sin and weakness.
But it also expresses hope. We don’t just smear dirt on our faces; we make the sign of the cross. And this is a huge part of the power of this day. Because our weakness and our mortality are not the only things that we know. At our deepest core, we also know that there is hope for us: that our sins will not be our undoing, not permanently. The sign of the cross made in ashes, expresses our hope that, even though we are dust, there is Salvation for us: God is kind and compassionate, patient and merciful. We’re reminded that God’s mercy is every bit as real as our sins; that our sins are like a drop compared to the ocean of God’s love. That even though our sins be as scarlet, he will make us pure and white as snow. The dust of our sins is transformed by the sign of the cross, into glory. And so this season we’ve now begun: this season is not just about facing our sins. It’s about facing them down. You sins: you sins, which burden me, ensnare me, enslave me: you have no power over me. Because I am marked with the cross. My weakness will disappear in the sight of God’s strength. And so this remarkable season of Lent, this time of prayer and fasting and almsgiving, does not end in despair, but in Resurrection. Death is swallowed up in victory. Thanks be God, who gives us the victory, through Our Lord, Jesus Christ.