Marked by the symbol of the ashes, Father Dehon, in his Ash Wednesday meditation, confronts us with our fragility to better call us to a penance of the heart and an outpouring of love toward the Sacred Heart. An essential guide for a holy beginning to the forty days of Lent.
In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec reverteris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris (Gen 3:19). In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return (Gen 3:19).
First Prelude. Today, the priest traces the sign of penance and the sign of death upon my forehead with ashes. Second Prelude. Grant, O Lord, that this memory may inspire in me a true penance and prepare me for a holy death.
FIRST POINT: Remembrance of death and sin.
What are dust and ashes? They are the sign of destruction; the stamp that time, fire, and death impress upon the things of the earth. What remains of the most famous monuments of antiquity, of the most illustrious capitals—ancient Rome, Athens, Thebes, Babylon? Ash and dust. Where are those sumptuous buildings, those masterpieces of art once called the wonders of the world? Ash and dust. Where are the remains of the heroes and sages of old? Ash and dust.
The Church desires that, after the worldly festivities of recent days and before the great fast, we recall the vanity of human things; but above all, she wants us to meditate on our origin, on creation, the sin of the first man, and its consequences: “Remember that you came from dust and to dust you shall return.” This is the divine sentence following the Fall. Man was drawn from the clay, but he was not meant to return to it. He was to be confirmed in grace and glorified in both body and soul. He sinned, and with sin, death entered the world: Per peccatum, mors (Rom 5:12).
What devastation! Concupiscence and death are the fruits of sin. The Church proposes this fundamental meditation to us today. I have sinned in Adam, I have sinned throughout my life, I shall die. Forgive, O Lord, the sins of all my brothers in Adam; forgive all of mine. I weep for having offended and outraged You. I shall die, but first, I wish to repair my faults, erase them through penance, and merit the resurrection through the grace of Your sacrificed and merciful Heart.
SECOND POINT: A sign of weakness.
What am I? Ash and dust. Dust is carried away by the wind. So it is with my poor nature. I am accessible to every wind of temptation. I am as weak in my soul as I am fragile in my body. My will is as unstable as dust. In what, then, can I take pride? What a lesson in humility! “Why are earth and ashes proud?” says the Sage (cf. Sir 10:9). “All men,” he says again, “are but earth and ashes” (17:32). The nations, after a brief flash of brilliance, are like a heap of ashes after a fire, says Isaiah (cf. Is 33:12). Our life will pass away like a spark being extinguished, says the Sage, and our body will crumble into ashes (Wis 2:3). Abraham said: “Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes” (Gen 18:27). Yet, he spoke to God with humility and confidence.
Such must be the fruit of this ceremony. I must remember my nothingness and my fragility every day. The material sign will fade from my forehead, but the thought it expresses must remain engraved in my memory. I am but nothingness, yet I will go to God, but I will go with humility. I will go deploring my faults, making reparation and honorable amends for my sins and those of my brothers. I will go with the awareness of my weakness, yet confident nonetheless, because God is good, because the Son of God took a heart to love me and broke that heart to let the fragrance of His mercy flow upon my soul.
THIRD POINT: A symbol of penance.
Ashes have always symbolized penance. He who puts ashes on his head and garments signifies that he is sorrowful, even to the point of neglecting his appearance. Judith, in her patriotic mourning, put ashes upon her head. Mordecai expressed the mourning of his people in the same way. The Maccabees wept and covered themselves with ashes. In another sense, the ashes of the sacrificed heifer were mixed with water to form the lustral water that erases legal defilement (Numbers 19:2). Those sprinkled by these moistened ashes are purified because they participate in the sacrifice.
Our Lord alludes to ashes as a symbol of penance when He says to the guilty cities, Bethsaida and Chorazin: “If the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes” (cf. Mt 11:21). How shall I do penance this Lent? I will first fulfill, as far as possible, the precepts of the Church regarding abstinence and fasting; then I will die to my habits, my lukewarmness, my cowardice, my sensuality, and my naturalism. May the ashes on my head express this death! May I die through penance to live again through grace! But let me not forget which penance is preferred by the Sacred Heart of Jesus: it is penance out of love; it is the regret of having offended the best of fathers and friends, the Savior and Redeemer of my soul.
Resolution. I am sorrowful and feel the need to do penance until the Paschal resurrection. Every day I will formulate my penance in a spirit of love, and I will realize it through mortification and a true change of life. I will unite myself to the Heart of Jesus, the victim of reparation and salvation.
Colloquy with Jesus preaching penance.
