Meditation for Ash Wednesday

by CCW | 5 March 2014 18:20

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

Dust and ashes. These are the symbols that mark the beginning of the pilgrimage of love. For that is the deep meaning of Lent. It is all about the renewal of love in our souls and lives, a renewing in us of the divine image in which we are made. That there can be a journey, a pilgrimage, is itself the great good news for our world, weary and in disarray.

T.S. Eliot’s poem, Ash Wednesday, explores the ambiguities of our modern world, our uncertainties and hesitations, the ambiguities and the confusions of our desires.  “Because I do not hope to turn again,” it begins, a phrase which functions as a kind of mantra, and one which captures so much of the despair and uncertainty of our world and day. The despair and uncertainty is in ourselves. And yet, hope against hope constantly breaks through as counter to our despair. There is a yearning, a desire for something more. There is prayer. “Teach us to care and not to care/ Teach us to sit still,” echoing the psalm prayer, “be still and know that I am God,” (Psalm 46.10). Eliot’s poem ends with a prayer from the liturgy and which is included in the Penitential Service[1] of our Prayer Book (BCP, p. 614). And let my cry come unto thee.” Hope breaks through and seeks its voice, the voice of prayer.

Dust and ashes. They are the profound symbols that recall us to the truth of our humanity. Dust recalls us to creation, specifically to our human creation as the dust into which God has breathed his spirit, the concrete expression of our uniqueness as being made in the image of God, but as well having a connection to everything else in the created order. We are not the authors of our own being. “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves,” as the Psalmist puts it (Ps. 100). The dust is a strong reminder of our origins, of the truth of our being. “Remember, O man, that thou art dust.” It is something inescapable, something which can only be forgotten at our peril, for “unto dust shalt thou return.” We cannot escape our creatureliness. Denial is the folly of despair. No. The struggle must be to reclaim our being as made in the image of God.

Ashes, not dust, are imposed upon our foreheads on this day. And they are imposed with the sign of the cross. The ashes are the ancient symbol of repentance, a sign of sorrow and grief not simply for what has happened to us but for our awareness of our sins and folly, our awareness of how we have distanced ourselves from the truth of God and from the truth of ourselves as found in him. Augustine’s famous phrase, “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee,” captures wonderfully the theology of amor, the theology of love which is the moving principle of our Christian lives and of the season of Lent.

The ashes signal our turning back to God from whom we have turned away in one way or another. The ashes in the form of the cross remind us of how that turning back is actually possible. By the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. By way of the Cross. By way of repentance and the disciplines of Lent. To put it more directly, all these things are summed up in one thing, love. “Turn thou us, O good Lord, and so shall we be turned,” (BCP, p. 613). God’s love shapes and forms our loves and sets our loves in order.

Lent is the pilgrimage of love, the love that restores and perfects, the love that turns our sorrows into joy, the love that makes us blessed. To be returned to the dust, as the words of The Imposition of Ashes remind us, is to be returned to the truth of our being – not just dust, but the dignified dust of our humanity restored and redeemed in Christ. There is more to our lives and our experiences than just dust and death.

It belongs to the wonder of Ash Wednesday that dust and ashes should be used as the instruments and symbols to recall us to who we are in the sight of God. They recall us to the blessedness of our being in its truth and dignity.

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

Fr. David Curry
Meditation for Ash Wednesday
March 5^th, 2014

Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2014/03/05/meditation-for-ash-wednesday/

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