Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Those are the words for when we commit our dead to the ground with the casting of earth.
We’ve been hearing those words a great deal lately.
We are imposed upon today with the ashes that are the reminder both that we are going to die and that we are participants in the destructive power of sin the burns up all that is good and beautiful in creation.
It is not a casual reflection, we are imposed upon, our faces are rubbed in it.
I think the lesson is that life is very short, and we waste so much of it on that which is not love.
Life is too short and eternity is too long to waste on that which is not love.
We use and abuse each other and all creation, we are caught up in a way of relating to everyone and everything in a way that we cannot escape, that is the power of sin.
Sin is the ultimate addiction, from which we are powerless to free ourselves.
The imposition of Lent more than death and penitence is the imposition of grace that sets us free. The road of forgiveness is the road of freedom and recovery from being bound to the deadly ways of being in destructive and self-destructive relationships.
This way of being set free, of being penitent receives and participates in the Grace of God primarily in giving thanks in all things at all times and in sacrificial service to those who suffer and are in need.
We turn away from the way of using and abusing and turn toward the God who sets us free to be Eucharistic, giving thanks by serving.
It is interesting that the chrism oil at baptism is imposed upon our foreheads in the same way that the ashes of today are imposed upon us, and also in the same way that the oil of unction is imposed upon us when we pray for healing with the laying on of hands.
We are imposed upon by God’s Grace, it is rubbed in our faces as anointing oil.
And we turn that blessing into ashes.
Today we feel that bite.
And we begin again, always beginning, always starting over.