“By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)
It was Ash Wednesday 2018, just five years ago. Fourteen-year-old Alyssa Alhadeff went off to school that day, probably looking forward to soccer practice. She loved the game, and she dreamed that one day she’d play on the US Olympic Women’s Team. Alyssa was the smallest girl on her school’s team, but it is said she was the feistiest. The girls on her team said she was a natural leader.
But Alyssa never came home from school that day. Neither did sixteen others—students and staff—who were at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on that Ash Wednesday five years ago. A newspaper image published after the horrible events of that day shows two mothers embracing—one clearly displaying a cross smudged in ashes on her forehead.
How could anyone know, when they awoke that morning, what the day would bring? How can any of us prepare ourselves in a world where death seems to come so randomly? An earthquake takes over forty thousand lives, and we call this an act of God. Yet godless acts are all around us—over 500 homicides in the city of Philadelphia in 2022. As of last Friday there have been 76 mass shootings in the United States since January 1st of this year, leaving 87 dead and 205 wounded. A day at school, a trip to the mall or grocery store, sitting in the bleachers at your grandson’s basketball game—who knows at what moment your whole life will change? Or end?
How do we respond? With fear or denial? I heard a program on National Public Radio this past week about the ways we respond to traumatic events. Some will always choose to see the most emotionally crushing occurrences as motivation to make changes. They will seek some way to bring a beam of grace out of the shadows of horror. The two mothers I mentioned above, whose children were lost in the Parkland shooting, have each become advocates for gun safety.
But the pundits interviewed by NPR also mentioned the importance of ritual remembrance. Ritual and ceremony are our ways to try to heal the curse of being human—the curse articulated in the third chapter of Genesis: “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” So we gather together to remember our fragile humanity. We stamp the remembrance on our consciences, and on Ash Wednesday we mark it on our foreheads to remind ourselves and those who see us how very vulnerable we are. And, perhaps, in the knowledge of that vulnerability, will come the remembrance of how precious each life is.
We make the mark of our shared mortality in the shape of a cross, which also serves to remind us of how God entered into our vulnerable, breakable, human lives and endured the violence and the pain that are so much—and too much—a part of our experience. He walked with us, and, in these forty days of Lent, we walk with him.
Ash Wednesday is our annual wake-up call, our day of remembrance that life is so delicate and uncontrollable. It is the day we hear St. Paul remind us “Now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation.” It is a time to look at the tiny blink of God’s eye that is our allotted time on earth and rededicate our lives to loving God and one another and making Christ known.
We are called to remember the disciplines of these forty days. We are called to be generous—not as the hypocrites who seek to gain by giving. After all, if we think what we do will influence God, we are only fooling ourselves. Our efforts at appeasement aren’t religious. They’re superstitious. Now is the time to let God influence us. Our reward is in knowing we have done what is righteous—what has been the fruit of our relationship with God. We must ask if we wish to be remembered for what we’ve acquired or for what we’ve given away.
We are also called into prayer. And prayer can take different forms. It might just be the quiet meditation, the stilling of our minds, focusing on what really matters to us. It might be in contemplation of words of faith. What is faith? What is salvation? What is righteousness? What is religion? We might even try to contemplate what is God? But the contemplation of our own precarious position may lead us to prayers of intercession for all of those around us who hurt or need healing. Our prayers take us out of ourselves and open our hearts to others.
Finally, in Lent we are called to fast. It’s not about losing weight or punishing ourselves. The self-denial of this season is meant to be a time of re-evaluation. If we give up a fattening food or a pack of cigarettes, do we consider how much better we feel and how much less of a burden we’d be to others should our bad habits cause us health issues? If we give up binging on the internet, can we have more time for prayer? For sharing with our loved ones? For reading the Scriptures? For simply putting our lives in order? Can we use these forty days to shed some toxins from our lives?
In biblical times ashes were signs of shame or grief or, in some cases, could be used to staunch wounds. Now is the time, at the start of this holy season, to wear the ashes. Ashes of shame which Jesus forgives. Ashes of grief which Jesus comforts. Ashes for healing to staunch the flow of either denial or fear.
Dust we are, and to dust we shall return—but
not today.
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