Ash Wednesday

When Kayla sang with the Winnipeg Youth Chorus so many years ago, I used to be jealous of the Catholic kids who came to the Wednesday night choir rehearsals on Ash Wednesday.  They still had the cross on their foreheads from an early mass or a celebration at their school.  I never asked.  I was raised in the Christian Reformed Church, a Calvinist denomination with its roots in Holland. The Dutch are not frivolous and I grew up going to services that focused on the Word through sermons with a good dose of congregational singing accompanied by a pipe organ.  Even the stained glass windows in my childhood church were shapes and not pictures. As an adult, even after planning services that included more visuals and lighting advent candles and special sights for Easter, I was drawn to that small dark smudge.  It involved the feel and smell of ashes, the act of a priest applying it and the realization every time you looked into a mirror that it was there.

The mark of Ash Wednesday is ancient and carries a weight of tradition. It probably started as a good idea by a priest who wanted his illiterate congregants to remember their need for a Saviour. If you grew up having to go to mass on Ash Wednesday and probably were embarrassed by it,  the sign may not mean much anymore.  Good intentions often lose their meanings and purpose over time as they become mundane and expected. But to me, the ash cross is surprising, unusual and unknown. I am illiterate in the rhythms of the church year and the novelty draws me in.

So today I do not have an ashen cross on my forehead.  I just went to work and came home in blustery snow. But I do know that there must be people somewhere with a cross on their forehead.  I hope they are looking at their lives and remembering why we needed Jesus to come.  I am going to take the time to do that too.