Handful of ashes
Ashes will be traced, in the form of a cross, on foreheads in rites today that start off the season of Lent.
Everyone from slum dwellers, drug addicts and jeepney drivers to the Philippines’ embattled Chief Justice, get the same reminder: “Remember, man, that you are dust. And unto dust you will return.”
“Death plucks my ears and says: ‘Live – I am coming’,” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote on his 90th birthday. Death comes also to presidents.
Assassin bullets cut down Anwar Sadat in a Cairo reviewing stand, and John F Kennedy in a Dallas motorcade. In 1957, Ramon Magsaysay’s plane slammed into Mount Manunggal and exploded in a ball of fire.
All year round, we all dodge the reality of mortality. Quit shilly-shallying and get real, Ash Wednesday drills into us. We’re all flawed and “journeying to the grave”.
“This court will resume tomorrow at two o’clock in the afternoon,” impeachment presiding officer Juan Ponce Enrile rasps as he gavels the end of the day’s often-gruelling session.
“Presume not to promise yourself the next morning,” 14th-century writer Thomas a’ Kempis counsels. “And 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 he is taken out of sight, he is also quickly out of mind.”
Ask therefore “what if this day were to be my last?” suggests Augustine “Og” Mandino II, World War II bombardier turned author. “This day is all I have… Each hour cannot be banked today to be withdrawn on the morrow, for who can trap the wind?
“Today, I shall embrace my children and my woman. Tomorrow, they will be gone. And so will I. Today, I will lift up a friend in need. Tomorrow, he will no longer cry for help. Nor will I hear his cries… Tomorrow, I will have nothing to give. And there will be none to receive.
“Each minute of today must be more fruitful than the hours of yesterday… I will live today as if it is my last. And if it is not, I shall fall on my knees to give thanks.”
Foreheads smudged with ashes Wednesday signal the start of the 40-day season of Lent. Dusting with ashes, as a sign of contrition, goes back centuries. “The other eye wandereth of its own accord,” Job admits. “Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
The rite harks back to the shattering 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.”
“What is the meaning of our strange behaviour?” asks Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in his 2011 book: “Writing in the Dust”. “Three things, I believe. With these Lenten ashes, we confess. We promise. We hope…” in a journey toward renewal.
The three ascetical pillars of Lent – 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.
“We are able to ponder our ashes with/Some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes/Anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death,” Walter Brueggemann, notes in his poem “Marked by Ashes”.
Must this rebooting start on Wednesdays? asks the Philippine Jesuit website. Coming in the middle of things, Lent demands that we stop and break mid-stride, mid-sentence, even mid-thought. We must take stock…. What is truly important?
Those smudged ashes acknowledge that, in the end, it’s not the fault of MILF or al-Qaeda. Ash Wednesday is facing the truth of darkness in our hearts.
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 comes Easter Sunday.
