A Homily for Ash Wednesday
Readings: Joel 2:12-18 2 Corinthians 5:20—6:2 Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18
There is a line in the T. S. Eliot poem “The Waste Land” that may evoke the Book of Genesis. It certainly captures the message of Ash Wednesday.
Published in 1922, Eliot’s modernist poem laments the spiritual poverty of contemporary men and women. Liberty alone, freedom from the constraints of faith, has not brought us happiness. It only lines us up like lemmings, marching us into meaninglessness.
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
Deeply religious himself, Eliot saw his contemporaries as dwelling in a wasteland devoid of direction, of meaning itself. A world of sure purpose, one created by God, seems to lie shattered before us, like a ruin. Our great pursuits are shadows that never catch up to us. That is, until they rise to devour us.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of Man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is a shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
That’s the meaning of Ash Wednesday. Today, like the prophets of old, the church subverts our shadows, calls us out of the wasteland we have fashioned for ourselves. She does this with ashes.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Yes, Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, a time of fasting, prayer and almsgiving in preparation for the waters of Easter. But the day has a meaning all its own. We are challenged to stop chasing shadows. We are asked to turn and face our fears, to surrender to Christ, the rock made red by blood.
Do not allow the routine of ritual to dull the significance of this day, of these ashes.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Whether lagging behind us or rising to consume us, we circle our shadows. We know this, though we refuse to admit it. Today the church solemnly enjoins us to stare into the emptiness, to face our fears.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
We cannot vanquish fears we refuse to face: fear of loneliness, fear of loss, fear of need, fear of the unknown, fear of death. And so today we attempt—first in ritual and then in reality—to face our fears.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Repent, and believe in the Gospel (Mk 1:14).
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return (Gn 3:19).
