Ash Wednesday (March 5, 2025)

Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Every Ash Wednesday, we are reminded of our mortality: we will die and return to dust. And we must allow that fact to determine what we say and do right now. We are reminded of our finitude: we cannot do everything, but what can we do with the time that we have? Ash Wednesday and this season of Lent ask us to live knowing that our life on this earth will end. We came from dust and we will return to dust.

And yet, the distinctly Christian hope is that death is not the end. We must not sink into the darkness of nihilism, or embrace the absurdity of the Existentialists, or the empty hedonism of those without hope. Because tied to our conception of mortality is the promise that “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” There is more than this life and the trajectory that we on here and now is related to the one that we will be on there. Christianity is training us to die by recognizing our time here is fleeting, but that eternity is forever. We have hope but with fear and trembling.

That fear and trembling is because recognize that there is a coming judgment; fear and trembling because we realize that we’re not what we should be. Ash Wednesday asks: “What vices in my soul do I need to exterminate?” Ash Wednesday asks: “What virtues do I lack that I need to acquire?” And most importantly, Ash Wednesday asks: “Who do I need to love?” Our vices and sins aren’t going away if we leave them alone; they’re not even going away by our own power. Faith, Hope, and Love can’t be drummed up in us without God’s grace. So we come here today to receive the sacramental sign of the ashen cross on our foreheads and, more importantly, to receive his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist because we need his grace.

During Lent, we emphasize three disciplines: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Each one is a training for death. In prayer, we learn to say, “Not my will, but thy will be done.” In fasting, we learn to say no to our fleshly desires and so crucify the old man with Christ. In almsgiving, we learn to put others ahead of ourselves. In all these Lenten disciplines, those words reverberate: Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.