This used to usher in a noticeable change in the deportment of people and in the conduct of social life — in more pious days. The atmosphere was somber. Visits to church became more frequent. Care was taken to avoid meat or any food item coming from meat. Lent was serious. Boisterous laughter was considered in bad taste, and parties took place with far less abandon than on non-Lenten days.
Things are no longer so, and while the ministers of modernity may not mourn the passing of the old ways, what results from our diminished regard for sacred times and seasons is that the year becomes one almost enervating stretch of day upon day. The liturgical seasons were meant to lift mind and heart beyond the humdrum of the quotidian into the rhythm of the economy of salvation. And that, we have traded for the dross of ordinariness.
So, it is good that we pay heed to the ashes we shall receive on Wednesday. The rites once prescribed that clerics received the ashes on their heads. Some still do. The reason for this will be found in the Old Testament. Those who mourned or were stricken with misfortune, those who were repentant over some grievous wrong and were desirous of making amends with God, put on sackcloth — can we even imagine how uncomfortable that must have felt! — and covered their heads with ashes. The liturgy has stylized this by confining the ashes on the foreheads of the faithful — and while it is not required that the sign of the Cross be made, most priests do — the size of the cross marking the forehead depending on whether one was on friendly terms with the priest or has had a recent spat with him!
Ashes are all that is left when anything is burned — and they are the useful reminder that whatever lofty title it is that we may have, or our worth in treasure and possessions, or esteem and regard before fellowmen, we are really only ashes. In the creation story of the Book of Genesis, there is summed up the sublime anthropology of faith: We are made from the dust of the earth but into us has been breathed the very breath of God so that we are created in His image and likeness. The pride of Babel’s successful population made them want to build a tower that would reach to the skies — a metaphor obviously for the ancient sin of “wanting to be like God,” to be on his level, to bring God within human reach. God confounded them in their pride. The ashes of Wednesday spare us from this chastisement but also warn us that all our pride is really vacuous, unless it is boasting in the Cross. It is God who lifts us to himself, not any tower of human pride or insolence.
The legend of the phoenix is not what lies behind the rites of Ash Wednesday, for the phoenix, of its own mysterious power, rises from the ashes. But when we who realize that we are but dust and ashes cry out in utter helplessness, in that fundamental powerlessness that is theologically discoursed on as “original sin,” then we are reminded that the self-denial and the penitence of the Lenten Season are meant to purify us so that we may rejoice in the Resurrection that is not our doing, but is the mighty hand of God that lifts us from death and from the grave. We deny ourselves of all that we are wont to pamper ourselves with so that we may better recognize that, ultimately, the salvation that matters is God’s doing: union in the Resurrection of God’s Son, who tasted the bitter cup of death and drank it to the dregs but was raised by the power of God.
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
