Ash Wednesday

February 25, 2009 Psalm 51 As a priest, I have disposed of my share of ashes. By ashes, I mean cremated remains. I have interred them in the walls of columbariums. I have scattered them. The majority I have buried in the ground. I have heard of some of the ashes where divided and given to family members. I have prayed the committal service over the ashes of strangers, of friends, of very closer friends and of many relatives. And what I have discovered is that the ashes have all, essentially, looked alike. Some might be lighter in color than others. Some might be of a different consistency than others. But essentially, all the ashes have been the same. I could not tell one set of ashes apart form the other. In a sense, what cremation did to those bodies was equalize them. It reduced those bodies into something similar. Michael Harper, in his poem “We Assume: On the Death of Our Son, Reuben Masai Harper,” uses the wonderful phrase: “a disposable cremation.” That is exactly what cremation does: it makes our remains more disposable. I am reminded of the ashes of all those people, all those parishioners and loved ones, that I have buried over the years every year on Ash Wednesday. But I am also reminded of the ashes of someone else—namely, myself. This is what Ash Wednesday is about to some extent—it is about all of us facing the stark reality of our lives: we are all going to die one day. We are all essentially ashes. We are all going to be dust one day. Our bodies, as essential as they are to us right now, will eventually be disposed of. In earlier eras of the church, it was a tradition in some religious order to leave an actual human skull around. I remember my friend, Brother Benet Tvedten, OSB talking about how he and his mother visited the Carmelite monastery in Wahpeton, North Dakota in the 1950s. They were shocked, as they toured it, to see a human skull sitting on a table. These human skulls were known as momento mori—a remembrance of one’s own death. When one looked at the skull, one was to remind one’s self that they were, more or less, looking into a mirror. They were to reflect on the fact that one day, they too would be a skull. For me, ashes are essentially the same. When I look at the ashes of the people I bury, I am reminded that I too will be ashes like this. These ashes were share tonight are our momento mori. They are of us what those skulls were for earlier Christians. When these ashes are brought forward and place don our foreheads, we are reminded that this is what we will be one day. We are dust and to dust we shall all return. But as morbid as this thinking is, it is also tinged with a strange joy. Because we know that we not just our bodies. We are more than just bodies. And that, while our bodies will die, will become dust, will be disposed of, we will live. The season of Lent we are about to enter is a reminder to us that although we must go through this physical experience of our bodies, there is also another experience awaiting us—resurrection. Our bodies are ashes. We are dust, but we will rise again from this dust and live. In the psalm we will sing together in a few moments, we will sing these words, Deliver me from death, O God,* and my tongue shall sing of your righteousness, O God of my salvation. Death, as unpleasant as it is to experience, is not the ultimate experience we will have. Life—this life we are experiencing now and the fulfillment of this life ins Christ following our death, will be the ultimate experience. Life will triumph over death. Resurrection will triumph over the grave. The ashes we carry with us now as our bodies will give way to something incorruptible. God will deliver us, and when God does, we will sing of God’s goodness. For now, though, let us come forward and let us be reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Let us look at the ashes we are about to receive and remember our mortality, our limitations, our frailties. But as we do, let us also remember that, with God, ashes flourish into new life, mortality gives way to life without death, limitations are broken and frailty gives way to renewal and strength.