Ashes and Fire

If you are from Ryan or Manchester and this kind of sounds familiar, it's because it's a slightly reworked homily that I did when I was with you all. All that work wasn't for naught.

The most difficult thing that we Catholics have to deal with on this day is the fact that we read the gospel and then seem to do exactly the opposite of what it tells us to do. In case you didn't catch it, it said, "When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden. And your father, who sees what is hidden, will repay you." So the point is that, as far as the world is concerned, there would be no change in the followers of Christ when they fast. We aren't supposed to draw attention to ourselves like the hypocrites, which, biblically, refers to actors on stage. Actors seek to get people's sympathy and attention through their actions. We seek only to love and worship our God.

So why do we spread ashes on our forehead as we begin this season of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, an act that is very visible, especially in our clean obsessed society? Is it just another case of the Catholic Church being hypocritical? Hardly! And I'll tell you why I think this fits entirely into the Spirit of this gospel. I'd like to suggest that the ashes that are spread on our foreheads are more personal than they are for show. We spread ashes on our foreheads to remind ourselves of just how important this season of Lent is for our own salvation.

Nonetheless, why use ashes? Why not just go to the inner room of our house and make a firm committment? In pondering that I asked myself one question: What are ashes? Aren't they the remnants of a fire, what's left over? In that context, then, there is a multiplicity of symbolic messages that are connected to this practice. First of all, it connects us to our forbearers in prayer, the saints. Many of them were subjected to fire as a part of their torture and even more went through the fire of temptation to leave the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church in order to save their lives. These martyrs suffered much pain for the cross of Christ to have the reward of eternal life, sometimes to the point of shedding blood. These witnesses to the faith were willing to give all they could in service to Christ. We, in turn, must reach out to the least among us by giving of ourselves just as Christ gave himself to us on the Cross. This season, after all, culminates in the Triduum, those sacred three days when we remember the central mystery of our faith, the death and resurrection of the messiah.

Yet, fire also connects us to the Holy Spirit, whose tongues of fire came to rest on the apostles at Pentecost, the celebration that brings an end to Easter. It was at Pentecost that God made the church the only vehicle of salvation for the world. We see, therefore, the beginning of a giant circle in this celebration. We both begin and end in fire, the refining fire of the Holy Spirit that first drew us from the darkness of sin to the light of Baptismal grace and then, each year, pulls us deeper and deeper into the mystery that is the church. Our only responsibility, our only way of participating in this divine sacrament, then, is to pray, to fast, and to give alms. Yet, in doing these three actions, we are really saying to God that we are giving over our entire life to him. We truly aren't hypocritically telling the world anything by the ashes on our forehead. We are telling our God and ourselves that we are ready to go through fire to be with him. We are telling our God of our willingness to turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.