Ash Wednesday
Dear brothers and sisters,
The ashes which will soon be placed upon our heads are meant to help us “acknowledge we are but ashes and shall return to dust.”[1] To say that we are ashes is to acknowledge that we were once set afire; it is to acknowledge that the flame that once enlivened us has grown cold.
On the day of our baptisms, you and I were enlightened by Christ and our godparents received out baptismal candle. They, whose task it is to guide us in the Christian life, were told, “this light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly.”[2] If we are honest with ourselves, we have to acknowledge that we all too often have allowed the light of faith to grow dim. Some have even allowed it to be extinguished. But we are not without hope, because “from the ashes a fire shall be woken;” a dying fire can yet be fanned into flame (cf. II Timothy 1:6).[3]
Saint Augustine once prayed, “O love, you ever burn and are never extinguished. O charity, my God, set me on fire.”[4] He wanted to be set afire with the love of God because he knew that Jesus said, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing” (Luke 12:49)!
The ashes that will soon be placed upon our heads are a call for us to not let the fire of faith and the fire of love be completely snuffed out within this; throughout this season of Lent, it is our task to stoke the ashes so that the spiritual flame may again arise within us.
This holy fire can be stirred up within us with the pokers of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. As we take up these Lenten disciplines, we cannot neglect the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, for as Pope Francis has said: “The Gospel is just like fire: while it warms us with God’s love, it wants to burn our selfishness, to enlighten the dark sides of life, to consume the false idols that enslave us.”[5]
In these holy days, let us pray that through our devoted and humble reception of these blessed ashes the holy fire may be woken within us until we are engulfed with the fire of the love of God. Amen.
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