Ash Wednesday Homily

Today begins the Lenten season.

Therefore we will receive upon our forehead the mark of ashes making the form of the cross.

The minister of the ashes will say either “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” or “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”

This practice takes us back to scripture and reminds us of our need to turn away from sin in order that we may move back towards God. 

Such as seen in Judith 4:11 “And all the men and women of Israel, and their children, living at Jerusalem, prostrated themselves before the temple and put ashes on their heads and spread out their sackcloth before the Lord.”

The ashes also serve as a reminder of our own mortality and how through the course of time we will come to die.

No matter how hard we try this reality cannot be avoided. It is the only thing which we are entitled to in this life.

Jesus remarks in the Gospel of Saint Matthew: “If the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”

I encourage you to not only receive ashes upon your forehead today, but please realize that the mark which you will soon dare to bare is a public profession made to the world that you are a sinner.

A sinner who is in need of the Lord’s mercy.

A sinner who desires to turn away from their sinfulness and through actions of penance desires to be made clean.

We must mediate upon what we will do between the time when we get these ashes smudged onto our forehead leading up to the moment when we actually become these ashes through our passing into death.

I hope that in the time which will pass from our reception of these ashes leading to our death that we will come to “repent and believe in the Gospel” for we “are dust and to dust we shall return.”