1 March 2017 - Ash Wednesday - Joel 2:12-18

    For many years, Kris Ivancic served as the liturgist here at St James.  She just retired from that position this past December.  We now have an altar guild to cover all the different tasks that are required for our liturgies.  You cannot even imagine how many different things we have to do to prepare for Lent and Holy Week, probably our busiest time of the year here in the Church.  Each year before Ash Wednesday, one of our tasks is to burn the dried palms that have been saved from last year’s Palm Sunday celebration in order to have ashes to distribute on Ash Wednesday.  Those ashes signify many different this to the Catholic faithful as we receive that smudge of ash on our foreheads.  Our ashes bless us and sign us in repentance as we begin this holy season of Lent.  Our ashes signify the humility that fills our hearts today as we stand before God.  Our ashes symbolize the need we have for conversion and renewal in our lives, for the way we need to turn away from our sins and to refresh our hearts and our souls with the Gospel message. Yes, the fire and the ash from the act of burning the palms from our celebration of Palm Sunday are signs not only of our personal mortality, but also signs of of the wider destruction our sinfulness inflicts upon God, inflicts upon the world, and inflicts upon our fellow creatures.  There are many explanations for the ritual of receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday.  But, also, the mystery of this ritual, the way it touches our lives and our souls, is something that is hard to put into words. As Joel proclaims today, we rend our hearts, not just our outward appearance, as we desire to return to God with all of our hearts. As the reception of ashes touches our lives today, let us listen to the words of a sonnet written in honor of Ash Wednesday by the poet Malcolm Guite, a priest in the Church of England. 

Ash Wednesday

Receive this cross of ash upon your brow,

Brought from the burning of Palm Sunday’s cross.

The forests of the world are burning now

And you make late repentance for the loss.

But all the trees of God would clap their hands

The very stones themselves would shout and sing

If you could covenant to love these lands

And recognize in Christ their Lord and king.

He sees the slow destruction of those trees,

He weeps to see the ancient places burn,

And still you make what purchases you please,

And still to dust and ashes you return.

But Hope could rise from ashes even now

Beginning with this sign upon your brow.