Marked by ashes

“Death plucks my ears and says: ‘Live—I am coming,’” wrote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was 90 then. Sen. Juan Ponce

Enrile is also 90 now. Dust returns to dust. That is  Ash Wednesday’s bottom line tomorrow, as it starts the 40-day Lenten season.

Ashes will be smudged, in the form of a cross, on the forehead of President Aquino, on those who’ll never be president, on pork scam thieves in costly barongs, on beggars we half see. In a society where over 4.3 million of its members scrounge below poverty thresholds, panhandlers blur into the Lenten queues.

“Presume not to promise yourself tomorrow,” Thomas a’ Kempis counseled. “In the morning, consider you may not live till nightfall… Many die when they least think of it. A man is here today, and tomorrow, he is gone. And when out of sight, he is quickly out of mind.”

Ramon Magsaysay’s plane slammed into Mount Manunggal, exploding in a ball of fire in 1957. Assassin bullets cut down John F. Kennedy in a Dallas motorcade. All of us know someone whose life was snuffed out when least expected.

Wednesday’s ashes come from burnt Palm Sunday 2013 fronds. With oil of the catechumens, ashes are stirred into a paste. Then, a priest or lay minister traces the moist dust on foreheads. The rite harks back to the sentence, handed down in an Eden marred by disobedience: “By the sweat of your brow you shall get bread to eat, until you return to the dust from where you were taken.”

By the eighth century, “Day of Ashes” rites had become widespread. Post-Vatican II formulations are drawn from Mark. “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel,” one says. The other states: “Repent, and hear the good news.”

“What is the meaning of our strange behavior?” asks former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in his book “Writing in the Dust.” “With these Lenten ashes, we confess. We promise. We hope… in a journey toward renewal.”

Lent’s three pillars—prayer, fasting and sharing with the needy—are common to major faiths. Muslims observe Ramadan. Jews fast on Yom Kippur. Hindus and Buddhists set aside days for fasting.

Coming in the middle of things, Lent demands that we stop and break mid-stride, mid-sentence, even mid-thought, writes  Fr. Daniel Huang, SJ. We must take stock: What is truly important? “We all have our histories and pasts to deal with… Lent gives hope.” No matter how old we are—7 or 97—it is never too late to move one faltering but real step at a time.

Those smudged ashes acknowledge that, in the end, it’s not the fault of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and al-Qaida or those behind anomalies in government from pork barrel scams to rice smuggling. Ash Wednesday is facing the truth of darkness in our hearts. “We refuse to evade responsibility, to point fingers at someone else, to find convenient scapegoats, to practice our Filipino cultural expertise in  palusot.

“This is not mass masochism, communal guilt-tripping, just plain honesty…. In the end, it is our fault.

“We must refuse to remain paralyzed by self-pitying powerlessness that says  ‘hindi  ko  kaya,  ganito  na  talaga  ako,  di  ko  na  kayang  magbago,’” Huang adds. This is possible because of  “the utter gratuity of grace.”

Lent’s ashes make two choices clear. “This day… I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses,” Moses told his rebellious  people. “Choose life, so that you and your children may live.” Beyond a handful of ashes is an offer of “life to the full.” After Ash Wednesday is Easter Sunday.

At St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, North Carolina, “I take the ashes and walk toward the congregation, gathered in a circle,” writes Rev. Rhonda Mawhood Lee. “I swallow hard, because in that circle, life and death are visibly intertwined.”

“Ashen crosses are traced on forehead after forehead. They remind us of our uniquely human fate: to die one day, as all creatures must—but alone among those creatures, to know that death is coming.

“Before me is a boy conceived years after his parents lost their first child to cancer. Next is a little girl whose baby brother was stillborn. There are families complicated by divorce and enriched by adoption. Infants sit propped on a parent’s arm. I mark each of them with a cross of ashes, exhorting solemn children, gurgling babies and adults of all ages alike to remember… to dust you shall return…

“Children are more honest than adults about the resistance to death that we all share. I baptized Caleb, a 9-year-old boy with autism. ‘I don’t want to die! I don’t want a new life!’ Caleb was honest enough to speak the truth most of us avoid. We don’t want to die; we don’t want a new life. Later, he was pacified when assured of future life…

“Every year, I end with tears in my eyes.

Every time, I’m struck by the trust parents show by bringing their children to be marked. It is hard to accept that our children will return to dust.

“I don’t like placing ashes on babies’ foreheads…. But those ashen crosses are a sign that together we are raising these babies to trust the merciful God who remembers that we are but dust, and who promises that this precious dust will live forever…

“Christians stake everything on the revelation that death is the pathway to new life. But sometimes we need to see life and death, standing side by side, to understand fully the cost and the promise of that mysterious reality. And that is not easy.

“Christian faith tells that truth and calls to raise our children in light of it. It calls us not to fear death, but to cherish life, knowing that it can be painfully short, yet trusting in Easter’s promise. On Ash Wednesday, they invite us to prepare our bodies, souls and minds not only for the death that Holy Week will bring, but

also for the resurrection we will celebrate on Easter morning.”

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