Ash Wednesday is the holy day on which you are asked to face the facts

about yourself. Letting someone smear ashes on your forehead while telling you that
you are dirt is a statement that you have seen and accepted the facts about yourself, and
know theyre not in your favor. And, though this isnt as obvious, it is also a declaration
of the good news.

The Church doesnt give official explanations of what her rites mean, but heres what I
think what is being said through the imposition of ashes. Even if this meaning was
unintended as the rite developed, it dramatizes St. Pauls remark in 1 Corinthians that
since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all
die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. The rites points in two directions, one
corresponding to As in Adam all die and the other corresponding to In Christ shall all
be made alive.

To see this, we will have to use the original Latin version. It goes, Memento, homo, quia
pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. In the traditional English, Remember, O man, that
dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return. If I have read the rite correctly, the meaning
depends upon the double meaning of man. The word is, unfortunately I think, absent
from the Mass today. The Mass now offers two things for the priest to say as he imposes
the ashes: either Repent, and believe in the Gospel (listed first) or Remember that you
are dust, and to dust you shall return. We can keep the word man in mind even if it is
not said out loud.

The first movement dramatizes the truth that in Adam all die. The words you are dust
and to dust you shall return are a quote from Genesis, which comes at the end of the list
in which God tells Adam (man in Hebrew) what his disobedience will cost him, which
is also a description of what our disobedience is costing us. So it begins as a statement of
our identity and the consequences of our identity.

Remember, man: Remember, you descendent of Adam; remember, in the phrase from
the Narnia Chronicles, son of Adam, daughter of Eve; remember, original sinner, that
you are dust and to dust you shall return.

It is important to remember that we are not only children of Adam but willing children
of Adam. It is not so much that we fell with Adam into sin, as that we jumped into it with
our eyes wide open and a cheery wave to the crowd. We have chosen to return to the
dust.

Note that as a sinner you are merely an example of a category, man. You are not Bob or
Ted or Patricia or Ashley. You are just man. Sin destroys personality. It is a turning in
upon yourself that makes you less you. As a sinner, youre much less original and
interesting that you would be if you were a saint.

Think of people you have known who relate everything that happens in the world around
them to themselves, almost always with either calculation or resentment: Think not just
how miserable they are but how bone-wearyingly boring, because their world is so small.
To put it another way: Whose world is more interesting, wider, deeper, more filled with
interesting facts and stories, whose conversation would be more enlightening, in whose
world would you rather live: the average movie stars or St. Franciss? To put it even
more sharply: yours or St. Franciss?

In your sins, you are not even the unique individual you think yourself. You are not
special. You are average, mediocre, run of the mill. But nevertheless, the rite recognizes
that you are particularly interested in the fate of one boring sinner, yourself. Having
established your status, the rite goes on to pronounce your doom in the singular form,
literally to your face: You are dust and to dust you shall return. You: You individually,
you Bob, Ted, Patricia, and Ashley, are dust and will return to dust.

All this is conveyed in the action of the rite itself. You go forward and line up, either at
the chancel steps or along the altar rail, and you receive the ashes with the same words
everyone else hears. Remember what you are hearing when the priest says, Remember
that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return. You are hearing what is in essence your
death sentence your eternal death sentence.

And it is delivered without the drama and pastoral sensitivity we expect. It is as if a

doctor walked into his waiting room full of people with cancer, simply pointed to each
one and said in a monotone, Youre going to die, and turned around and walked back
into his office and closed the door.

So we hear on Ash Wednesday that in Adam all died, which means that we are dead in
our sins. It is a fact of some importance, but one we spend most of our lives ignoring.

That is the obvious meaning of the rite. Because you are a sinner, you are going to die
and disappear, your decayed body scattered like the gold dust at the end of The Treasure
of the Sierra Madre, a symbol of the vanity and futility of human life.

In Christian worship, however, you cannot avoid the Christian hope. Sin does not have
the final word, even here, when your doom is being pronounced. As St. Paul says, For
since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam all
die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Where in this statement that we are dust and will return to dust is any kind of hope? In
the double meaning of man. When we hear the words on Ash Wednesday we also have
fixed in our minds the words of the Nicene Creed: for us men and our salvation he
came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man. To be a descendent of Adam is also, and more importantly, to be a
man or woman for whom the Son of God became man, died, and rose again.

So the rite is saying: Remember who you are, by your own choice, but remember also
who you are by Gods choice. Remember, O Son of Adam, that you are not only a Son of
Adam but that you are also a child of the Father through adoption. You are dust, yes, but
you are redeemed dust, you are dust that God will reassemble. You may look forward to
the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. After all, the God who
created us from the dust of the earth can just as easily recreate us from the dust into
which we have decayed.

It is this second part of the message that changes the imposition of ashes from a drama
of despair to a drama of repentance. Without the Christian hope, the rite would be a
poetic statement of the ultimate futility of human desire and effort, a biblical version of
Shelleys poem Ozymandias. In that poem, you will remember, a traveler is describing
a broken statue he saw in the desert,

. . . And on the pedestal these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

That is the best we can hope for, a sort of grand romantic and mournful realism, without
the Lord who for us men was made man.

The Ash Wednesday hope is conveyed in the action of the rite itself. You receive the
ashes at the same place and in the same posture you receive Communion, and in fact will
receive Communion a few minutes later, with its assurance of Gods favor. And
psychologically, at least, it is a safe place, indeed a sort of home: precisely the sort of
place you would want to hear bad news. And the ashes mark a cross upon your forehead,
a sign not only of the cost of your sins but also of your redemption from your sins.

So the imposition of ashes has a double meaning, one despairing, because it describes
the reality of what we have made ourselves; the other hopeful, because it describes the
new reality God has made for us. For the Christian, hope trumps despair. In Adam all
die and In Christ shall all be made alive are both true, but Christ has conquered death.

This is not a reason to feel good about yourself on Ash Wednesday. It is a fast day given
us to remember what we have done and to try to learn how much of the old Adam
remains in us. The more you see what Jesus did for you, the more you will want to track
down your sins to the places they have hidden, drag them into the light, and with Gods
help drive them away.