Setting Out On Ash Wednesday

The word Lent comes from the Old English word for lengthen - as in: "The spring days are lengthening." We say of Lent that it lasts forty days because the gospels tell us that Jesus fasted and was tempted in the wilderness for forty days. The forty days echo the wandering of the Hebrews in the Sinai Desert for forty years, and that in Noah's day it rained for forty days and forty nights. 

But then we can get fussy and start debating whether the Sundays of Lent "count". If I intend to set out into Lent - then I should just do it; God isn't counting. Forty is a symbolic number that means, "a long time." 

The day begins with ashes...an outer sign of an interior or invisible reality. The first words of the first reading at Mass today: "Even now," says the Lord, "return to me with all your heart...rend your hearts and not your garments." Joel 2:12  Lent is interior.

The little cross on our foreheads is supposed to remind us that we'll die some day. I don't have forever to learn forgiveness. I don't have forever to learn to "let it go." I don't have forever to get Christ's new mind. I don't have forever to get real inner peace.

But there's more to ashes than just a death-reminder. Like snow, ashes are called a poor man's fertilizer. Farmers and gardeners have long spread ashes on their gardens and fields in the spring to make them more alive. It's said that the winter wood-ashes sweeten the soil. The whole human race could do with some sweetening. So maybe this Lent we'll sweeten a bit. But some people (perhaps men more than women) might object: a sweet person is delicate, a sissy, soft, a loser, weak, easily taken advantage of.

But sweet really means: non aggressive, not bitter, not hardened or harsh. A sweet person is tender-hearted, understanding, respectful, forgiving. As I accept the ashes today, I accept that I am going to die someday, but before that day comes, I would like to know that I have sweetened somewhat. 

As I walk up the church aisle today to receive the ashes, I might pray quietly about this - ashes spread for the sweetening of soil. My inner soil. My inner garden.