IN biblical times, ash was a symbol more of humility than of mortality. When God’s chosen people broke His law they would smear their faces with ash as a sign of humble repentance.
Today, however, when the priest sprinkles people’s heads with ashes, the mantra of “Remember man that you are dust and to dust you shall return” is more a reminder of our mortality than a prompt for the humility to repent.
To be more direct and to be more in tune with the Lenten spirit of repentance, the mantra should probably be “Humbly admit your sins and repent of them before you return to the dust from where you came.”
And to avoid making it an empty symbol and perfunctory observance of traditional ritual, clergy and faithful should seriously examine their collective consciences and identify what is most sinful about Catholics today as a Christian community. What sins do we, as a Christian community, need to repent of and atone for?
The answer lies somewhere in the fact that after 500 years of ritual smearing of ashes on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday, the only Christian country in Asia is inarguably the most corrupt and (consequently?) poorest in the region.
This fact clearly points to the neglect of Filipinos by their leaders in government, in business, in civil society, and even in Church. It points to the sin of greed, corruption, and injustice of our leaders.
But it also points to the sin of omission of the followers who fail to stop the frenzied drive for wealth, privilege, and power of their leaders. Instead of denouncing and stopping their greed we allow them to compete for our loyalty (votes) by joining them in their political tables to get more crumbs than the next person.
Above all, it points to the clergy’s failure to preach the God who came to heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and asked to be worshipped in the “temples of our hearts.” Instead, they preach a God that demands (under pain of mortal sin) ritual worship every Sunday in “temples made of stone.”
The God of the bishops is not the God who said in Psalm 82:3-4, “Give justice to the poor and the orphan; uphold the rights of the oppressed and destitute. Rescue the poor and helpless; deliver them from the grasp of evil people.”
One Ash Wednesday, soon I hope, Catholic clergy and faithful will have to humbly admit to having failed Christ in our land. Then our prayer will no longer be for grace to accept God’s will but for courage to denounce the injustice that is destroying the nation.
Until we all preach the God who came to liberate us from the “evil consequences of sin” (poverty, ignorance, etc.) we can only look forward to another 500 years of corruption and massive poverty in this (Christian?) country.