Ash Wednesday’s Ashes

The ashes on Ash Wednesday. What do they mean? For Catholics, it is the beginning of the Lent season, the season in the church calendar which remembers the 40 days leading up to and including Jesus’s death on the cross. In the years since I became a Catholic, I have waited for this time of year with both mixed and strong emotions. One of these emotions was reluctance because as a lover of food, my physical body bulks at fasting. During those first years that I became Catholic, I also felt that I was supposed to be in a state of continual penance for those 40 days, knowing that the ashes placed on our forehead were to remind us we were sinners. This was not a comfortable thought. I knew too that the ashes were also to remind us of our own death, that our physical bodies would return to dust. This too did not set well, death being an unpleasant thought. However, trying to be a good Catholic, I tried to wrap my mind around this and found the effort made me feel even more rebellious- even though I tried not to. Therefore the days leading up to Lent were like grasping at the last fleeting bits of the secure life I daily led and the 40 days ahead were like dreading a time of great discomfort. I wonder if there are others who feel like I did?

Something changed for me this year though.

About a week ago, I was talking to my priest and he mentioned that Ash Wednesday was the following week. I startled. “Oh, that is right,” I thought. Yes, I had known it was coming up, but my life had been so busy that I had placed it in a backspace to worry about later on. I didn’t like the feeling it gave me because I embrace being Catholic, except I struggled with this time of year. I wished I did not, but no matter how much I wanted to change my feelings I could not.

It was a few days later. I was preparing for Ash Wednesday and I was looking up to see if I should pray the usual Wednesday Rosary- the Glorious Mysteries or the Sorrowful Mysteries which tied in with Ash Wednesday. I found out that yes, on Ash Wednesday one prays the Sorrowful Mysteries- but it was while I was beginning to pray the rosary that I was led to the realization of what Ash Wednesday was. Indeed, it surprised me. The realization happened as I remembered the 1st Sorrowful Mystery, “The Agony of Jesus in the Garden”. Jesus was about to give up His life on earth to obey the Father. He knew there would be terrible pain and suffering, but He gave Himself over to His Father, God the Father, trusting in His Father’s will.

I realized then, that yes, the ashes do represent sin, but also the death of sin. It reminded me that my body will become dust after death- but I also realized that what lives on is my spirit, and this is what my main concern should always be, not what is fleeting on earth, because my physical body will not last.

So, this time when I was fasting, I knew it was to remind me that yes, my physical body was hungry, but that my spirit would be fed if I trusted in God. In this, I was learning self-control and to obey the higher self, my own call from God, and not what I wanted on earth.

Lent is a time to follow the timeline of Jesus as He Himself prepared to die on the cross. It can also parallel our own journey to let sin die within us if we allow Jesus to lead us. It is with this awareness that we can open to a very intimate time with Christ if we allow it and follow His lead. In this, He is the Bridegroom initiating each of us, His Church, the Bride, to become more Aware of Him, and therefore ourselves, as we follow Him the 40 days to the opening of resurrection. I say this because even as the ashes represent death, they are placed on us as a cross, that we can pass through and become new. We can do this if we truly wish to progress, by trusting in Jesus, because this is God’s promise to us. I am already discovering this and I hope you may too. Blessings on your Lenten journey.

Yours in Christ Light- Jody