People want ashes
The following is an excerpt from “In My Heart Like a Burning Fire,” by Fr. Benjamin Berinti, C.PP.S. The full book can be purchased on Amazon.
Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:12–18; 2 Corinthians 5:20–6:2; and Matthew 6:1–6, 16–18
During my college campus ministry days, Ash Wednesday used to drive me crazy. In spite of the fact that we held several liturgies with the distribution of ashes throughout the day, they never seemed to be sufficient—not as far as I was concerned, but rather as far as the community was concerned. People wanted ashes—that’s all there was to it! In fact, it became somewhat of a circus, as people kept coming to the office every few minutes throughout the entire day, sheepishly looking for “ashes-on-demand!” No sooner did I wash my hands than yet another repentant soul was at the doorstep.
My last year at the college, I decided, depending upon one’s viewpoint, to either end the circus, or perhaps to make it even grander. Lest I be severely criticized for denying someone the opportunity to celebrate their faith or turning off yet another soul to the Church, I placed a large bowl of ashes on a table outside our office door, with a glitzy sign that read: “HELP YOURSELF!” But beneath these words, I scripted, ever-so-slightly: “Beware! Apply at your own risk!”
Ashes are not tokens in a religious board game, nor a pious amulet or good luck charm, nor a badge of Catholicism—they’re not an emblem nor a safety seal. Ashes are a stain … something unsettling … the product of burning something away, left over after fire passes over and through something.
Many years ago, my friend Rev. Jan Richardson wrote about how her seemingly innocent words about “dust and ashes” came back to haunt her in a searingly painful way—a vivid reminder that these ashes are not playthings, not for the faint of heart.
Jan tells us: “When I wrote [the words], ‘[Do] you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?’ as part of an Ash Wednesday blessing a few years ago, I could not have imagined how much I would need those words for myself, and how soon. [My husband] Gary died later that same year, just as the season of Advent was beginning. In the devastation, the question I had posed in that Ash Wednesday blessing would return to me, coming both to challenge and to console.”
The crosses we will wear upon our brows this sacred day will never be large enough to mark all the ashes of our lives. Other than on this Day of Atonement, the ashes of our lives—the ashes of who we are and what we bring about in our own and others’ lives—are mostly hidden from sight, not so boldly displayed front and center.
But we wear them on Ash Wednesday, despite the scriptural warning to keep away from public displays of ego-centered religious ritual, to remember who alone is capable of purifying and cleansing us. Who alone gathers up the ashes and into them breathes new life! We wear these ashes, most importantly, to remember that we belong to God, who well knows what to do with the dust and ashes that cover our lives.
But this does not happen, cannot happen, until our ashes are faced and confronted, until our ashes are stirred up and named, until our ashes are grieved, wept over, and mourned.
And so, we cry out today, as did our ancestors in faith: “Remember your people, O God. Spare your people, Lord!” For only then will “the Lord be stirred to concern and have mercy on us.”
Fr. Ben Berinti, C.PP.S.