Thoughts on Ash Wednesday from the perspective of a Catholic Priest

I am not in a humungous parish.  I have four masses every weekend at my parish (not counting masses I might have at the neighboring prison on the weekend or at a parish about 40 miles away where I help out at the Spanish mass a couple Sundays a month.)  But, yesterday, I had 5 masses total, which included a mass at a neighboring liberal arts college.  We even had some people show up during the day asking for ashes, people who I have never seen before who may not even be Catholic.  For some reason, Ash Wednesday captures the imagination of a lot of people, whether they identify closely with organized religion or not.  This act of publicly receiving ashes on your forehead and declaring that you want repentance, conversion, transformation, and renewal - that is so appealing to so many people in our modern world.  today.  The world may change a lot, but some things still resonate.