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Ashes to Ashes

Today I got in touch with my Catholic roots in--of all places--a Presbyterian church. Every Wednesday I serve at Broadway as part of my year-long field education, which on Wednesday primarily involves leading the young adult/college group in the evening. However, today being Ash Wednesday, the church was open for most of the day to anyone who wished to receive ashes. (Yes, it turns out that Protestants do receive ashes. Who knew?) The church's full-time pastor and I took turns administering ashes to people as they wandered in throughout the afternoon and also during the evening service. It was an altogether strange, solemn, and humbling experience to be the one making an ashen cross on people's foreheads and uttering the words of Genesis 3:19: "Dust you were and to dust you shall return."

I was intensely moved today by several different aspects of what I experienced. First of all, in receiving ashes on our foreheads we're participating in a ritual as old as the Bible. When Job is humbled by God's response to his demand for vindication, he repents in "dust and ashes". Second, about 90% of the people who came to the church for ashes prior to the service were Catholic. How could I tell? Many crossed themselves upon entering the church, kneeled to pray even though there are no cushions for kneeling, genuflected to the massive pipe organ that occupies the real estate reserved for a crucifix in a Catholic church, and a few even called me "father"! Third, people from all walks of life were drawn to the church today--black, white, Hispanic, and Asian, young and old, students and professionals, residents and tourists, affluent and homeless--yet all came to be reminded of their mortality and brokenness, but also to live in hope and expectation. Not bad for a Wednesday.

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