This day, with the penitential rite of the imposition of ashes, marks the beginning of the Lenten season, the journey towards Easter. It is a time of penance, purification and conversion.
Today is known, in a special way, as Ash Wednesday, and the title of this day fits perfectly with the time we are beginning. The call to spiritual renewal implies a change, a rethinking of our life, a reconsideration of things. The rite of the imposition of ashes expresses well this call to conversion, through one of the formulas that are used: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return".
Wednesday and ash: two words that evoke what happens. Wednesday is a day in the middle of the week. It is an in-between point, a favorable time to look back and look forward. All our Wednesdays are marked by ashes, but, as a poet once said, “Wednesday is a time to look back and look forward.“each of our Ash Wednesdays anticipates your Easter victory over that dry taste of death”.”.
Ash, with its color, is really something big. Ash is a shade of gray. It is a beautiful color with great symbolic capacity. Gray, although it is a distinctive color, has something of an intermediate character. The dictionary will tell us that it is an intermediate color between black and white. It always seems to be on the verge of something, on the threshold of evolution; to see it is to be on the verge of witnessing a change. Chesterton captures this essence admirably when he points out that gray exists so that “let us be perpetually reminded of the indefinite hope there is even in doubt; and when there is gray weather on our hills or gray hairs on our heads, perhaps they may still remind us that there is morning".
Today, the Church puts us on alert for change, an opportune moment to change our lives. This is precisely what Ash Wednesday is all about. The Lenten practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, which we read about today in the Gospel, are all geared to inner change, and so it is insisted that they be done in secret. As the Gospel says: “and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you for it".
Today's readings remind us that this is a favorable time for conversion, for returning to the Lord. The prophet Joel conveys to us the Lord's invitation: “To return to the Lord.“turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping and wailing; rend your hearts, not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God.”. And the Church addresses her plea to the whole community with the same words of St. Paul to the Corinthians: “In the name of Christ we ask you to be reconciled with God... now is the favorable time, now is the day of salvation.".
As T. S. Eliot expresses in his conversion poem Ash Wednesday, We expect this change to be genuine:
For I never hope to return / For I never hope / For I never hope to return / Desiring the gift of this one and the vision of that one /
I no longer strive to strive for such things....
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