There's something about Ash Wednesday

Dear friends,

There’s something about Ash Wednesday.  Every year it happens:  people who don’t come to church regularly—or, sometimes, ever—show up on that first day of Lent to be marked with ashes.  Sometimes they come to the Ash Wednesday service; sometimes they show up at a different time of day altogether to seek that ashy cross.  I’ve brushed aside thick hair and wispy bangs to make room on foreheads for those two crossed lines that form our central Christian symbol; I’ve marked smooth hairless heads of infants and wrinkled bald heads of old men.  It is holy, every time.  It is somber and humbling and holy. 

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  Yes.  Ash Wednesday—and indeed all of Lent—is about remembering our frailty and our worth, our sinfulness and God’s love for us.  In the prayer book liturgy for Ash Wednesday, the priest says, I invite you … in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.  As your priest, I invite you to the observance of a holy Lent.  And I invite you to begin that observance at one of our three Ash Wednesday services so that you can receive again the grainy gray reminder of God’s love for fragile, fallible you.

Blessings,

Anne