#650: Ashes on Ash Wednesday

And going on hiatus.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” So goes the refrain that many Christians will hear today as they enter into a season of contrition and penitence. During Lent, we are invited to enter more deeply into Christ’s love by soberly and reverently seeking to mortify the sinful desires that have deformed our flesh by putting them to death. Paul writes to the Corinthians that we are “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” The penitence and contrition of Lent distills this reality, by concentrating our attention on the death that reigns over us so that we might participate more deeply in Christ’s life.

Lent begins, though, not with the imposition of dirt but ash. Ash Wednesday is no ordinary confrontation with our mortality, with the body’s frailty and vulnerability just as such. Adam is created from the dust and we will return to dust—but this is not a natural “cycle” of life, some kind of organic law of creation and decay and recreation. The imposition of ashes is a reminder that the dust to which we return is a destruction of the original because of our rebellion against God. The organic condition of “mortality” that constitutes our humanity was a natural sign of God’s judgement on sin. The death we encounter in Ash Wednesday is not the natural limit of our body, but God’s assertion and vindication of His holiness against our infidelity and betrayal.

The burning fires of God’s holiness are relentless: there is no earthly pleasure nor good that can survive them, not even the acts of service and of charity that we might hope defines our lives. In some churches, the ash for this day comes from the branches we wave on the prior Palm Sunday. The imagery is fitting: even our praise of the Messiah, good and right and just as it might appear, must be brought through the refining fire of God’s love. When the children of Israel are brought into the Promised Land, they are warned to guard themselves against idolatry—precisely because it is not the evils of this world that disturb the Christian, but its goods. The Lord God is a “a consuming fire, a jealous God,” Moses tells them (and us), who will not abide the hearts of Israel being turned away from Himself by the very gifts that He desires to give them.

We impose Ashes, then, not to remind us of our mortality as such but because in the moment of our death we are naked before God. “The only hope, or else despair,” Eliot writes in Little Gidding, “Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—To be redeemed from fire by fire.” Love is the “unfamiliar name” that wove the “intolerable shirt of flame,” which has displaced the hair-shirt that a monastic might have worn. “We only live,” he concludes, “only suspire/Consumed by either fire or fire.” In his poem Ash Wednesday, Eliot observes that the torment of love unsatisfied is terminated by a “The greater torment / Of love satisfied.” Lent is the season in which the satisfaction of our Love in God becomes a torment, as we are purged by fire of the lesser loves that would keep us from radiating with the cool, incandescent warmth His Holy Spirit.

Paul Ramsey Fellowship

If you are interested in bioethics, the Paul Ramsey Fellowship is accepting applications until March 24th. I spend a few weekends a year hanging out with them talking bioethics and enjoy it very much!

Around the Web

I learned much from this essay about the differences between the dogs in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

Liz Breunig hopes the Left will embrace pro-natalism.

Mt. Sinai, by El Greco.

An Update

This is issue #650 of this newsletter. I began it on a different platform (RIP Getrevue) on January 12th of 2019 and have written two or so issues per week since then.

As ‘members’ of this newsletter know, I made a number of significant changes to my life at the end of last year. I said then that I would re-evaluate it as I settled into my new rhythms in the spring.

I have no plans at this point to stop writing here—but I do plan to take a break during Lent, as I have sometimes done with social media. While I have begun to gain momentum on a broader writing project, this spring has been surprisingly challenging in a variety of other respects and has left me without much energy or confidence in the shorter-term reflections I have been offering here since 2019. My hope for the season is to discern what role (if any) this forum should play in my vocation going forward. While I anticipate returning to it, I would like to do so with (perhaps?) more clarity about why I am doing so and what I think I can meaningfully contribute to readers’ lives. Mostly, though, I am just tired right now and feel like I need a bit of a break.

If you are a paying member of this newsletter, thank you. Should you want a refund, then simply respond to this email. Otherwise, I plan to extend everyone’s memberships by three months.

See you after Easter.

The Penultimate Word

“This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.” — T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday