Ashes to Ashes

Ashes on our foreheads today are signs to us and to the world around us that we've begun a special season and have the best intentions of making use of the time to spruce up our spiritual lives. It is helpful to remember that these ashes were once palms blessed on Palm Sunday and waved as signs of royal acclaim to accompany Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The "Hosannas" sung on that day have become the "Be mercifuls" of today, and the burnt palms reduced to ashes now signify the transformation that we are undertaking. For from these ashes shall rise a person who has died and risen with Jesus and come to know a bit more deeply and live a bit more fully the truth of what it means to be baptized. The three prongs of Lent, fasting, prayer and almsgiving, can help us flesh out this abstract concept as we find ourselves abstaining from meat, cutting back on snacks, attending stations of the cross and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and giving more generously, not only money, but perhaps those unused clothes that just pile up from year to year, to the poor. This "cleansing action," purging, purification, as all part of the ashes of Lent, but the final product is a person who rises from them, walking and talking more like Jesus than ever before. The time is short, "now is the acceptable time" (2 Cor 6: 2). Let's not waste a minute.
Bro. Rene