I love Ash Wednesday.
One of my favorite things about this day is that when I walk around campus I can tell who all the Catholics are…you kind of grin at each other and instantly know something very intimate about the other person. You know that while you aren’t on the same page about everything, you are at least in the same chapter on the most important things. You notice people you know from classes but didn’t realize they were Catholic; you see some people you are really surprised about as well. The cross upon ones forehead, I think, makes a person very vulnerable; suddenly just by looking at a person you can tell so much about them and what they are, in that moment, proclaiming to believe. Now if you see that person at a party you can think, “Wait a second, aren’t you Catholic?” Or perhaps you’d seen that person at a party before and, remembering something they did, are wondering about the contradiction. In short, Ash Wednesday can be a day of wonderful surprises, quiet witness, but also a day full of the temptation to judge.
What is this day all about anyways?
Well, as with many Catholic traditions, it’s always about one thing: Christ. Also like many Catholic traditions it also serves to call us to remember many things. It seems to me that the theme of one-though-also-many seems to weave itself through just about everything when Jesus gets involved… 
I’ll try and touch on those that come to mind.
The most obvious meaning to Ash Wednesday is…ashes! The ashes, as most people know, represent our repentance for our sins; ashes were used similarly throughout the Old Testament. By being marked with ashes we admit, very publicly, that we are sinners. That we are marked with a cross made of ashes gives witness to an even higher truth than that of the Old Testament: that we are sinners yet SAVED by the Cross.
Also relating to the ashes we are reminded that we came from the dust of the earth, and to that dust we will return. As is read upon a plaque in a Capuchin crypt in Rome, the dead themselves tell us, “Where you are, we once were…where we are, you will be.” We read in Genesis that God created man from the dust and then went on to bring about His last creation, woman, from man’s side (praise God!!). The cross of ashes, just as they reminded us of the promise of eternal life, also remind us that the Christian’s life always tends toward the cross upon which we will die, only to be raised by the One who died upon it first. We are a suffering people, crumbling to dust yet yearning for life, having it promised to us though it seems so far away yet.
Ash Wednesday is also the beginning of Lent, a time where we combined the traditions of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and the different Churches of Catholicism observe these in different ways. In the West the only days of fasting are Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, with all Fridays of Lent being days of abstaining from meat. Many Catholics also try fasting or “giving something up” during Lent or perhaps take on something extra. This causes a lot of needless anguish and anxiety in people; I think St. John Chrysostom says it best in reminding us that Lent is more importantly a time for fasting from sin. No wonder he is a Doctor of the Church! In the East they not only begin observing Lent three days earlier, but I believe their fasting is much more strict though I don’t know much more about it.
During this time we recall the forty days Christ spent in the desert after His baptism, praying and fasting before beginning His public ministry. We are also invited to do the same so that, reinvigorated by the graces of Easter, we are better prepared to minister in the world. Likewise we have an opportunity to grow in holiness, to deepen our relationship with God and to understand our faith, to turn away from things that normally distract us from the holy life we desire or even are the sources of temptation for the sins we struggle with the most. This time we spend in the “desert” reminds me of Hosea 2:16 when God (speaking of Israel) says, “So I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart.” Lent is a chance to quiet our lives and to hear the whisper of God that is so often drowned out by IPods, television, video games, and all manner of things that bark and beg for our attention.
Really I think Ash Wednesday can be summed up by St. Gemma Galgani’s conviction that “It is not enough to simply look at a cross or even to wear one; we must rather carry the Cross within our hearts.” Receiving the ashes on your forehead does not make you a Christian; it is an outward sign of an inward reality, or at least of the reality one hopes for. That cross on our forehead must also be upon our hearts, a constant confession with every beat that we are sinners yet not abandoned to death, that we die so that we may truly live, that death itself will one day crumble utterly to dust, that Christ has staked His claim upon us in a way that cannot be wiped away. Lent is a time when we can set aside some quality time to intentionally open ourselves to the slow, steady and gentle work of Christ in us and to observe how He works, learning the many ways that He moves our hearts ever closer to Him so that when Lent is over we are more attentive and are not so blind to the thread of salvation history sewn through our very souls.
In other news, there was this humorous little incident last year…
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