From Dust to Glory: The Profound Symbolism of Ash Wednesday

It is one of those splendid contradictions of Christianity that we begin our most solemn season by declaring our own absurdity. On Ash Wednesday, we quite literally wear our humiliation on our foreheads, marked with the very substance that symbolizes our eventual dissolution. It is, when you think about it, a rather outrageous thing to do. The modern world, which is so very concerned with dignity and self-assertion, must find it quite mad that millions of seemingly reasonable people choose to walk about with dirty foreheads, proclaiming their mortality to passing strangers and office colleagues alike.

But here we arrive at the first great paradox of Lent, which is that by embracing our humiliation, we find our dignity. By declaring ourselves dust, we remember that we are sacred dust indeed – for we are dust that God chose to breathe life into, dust that He shaped with His own hands, dust that He loved enough to join Himself to in the great mystery of the Incarnation. The modern man says "I am only human" as an excuse for his failures; the Christian says "I am human" as a declaration of his astounding dignity. For in Christianity, even our degradation has become somehow magnificent.

This paradox extends through the whole of Lent, those forty days that stretch before us like a small desert of the soul. We are told to fast, and yet we are warned by Christ Himself not to look miserable while fasting. We are to practice self-denial, but we must not practice it proudly. We must remember we are sinners, but we must not despair of our sins. In short, we must be happy about being sad – another of those magnificent Christian contradictions that drive rationalists quite mad.

The modern world, which has somehow managed to combine the maximum of comfort with the maximum of complaint, cannot quite understand what we are about during Lent. It sees only deprivation where we see preparation, only gloom where we see cleansing. This is because the modern world has lost the art of fasting while perfecting the art of dieting. It denies itself sugar for the sake of its figure but cannot comprehend denying itself anything for the sake of its soul. The difference, of course, is joy. A diet is undertaken with grim determination; a fast, properly understood, is undertaken with a kind of fierce gladness.

Consider the curious fact that the word "carnival" comes from "carne vale" – "farewell to meat." Our ancestors were wise enough to make a celebration out of the beginning of their deprivation. They understood what we have forgotten: that there is something powerfully human about the cycle of feast and fast, that our very limitations can become occasions of joy if we embrace them properly. They knew that saying goodbye to something could be as much a cause for celebration as welcoming it back.

This brings us to another paradox of Lent: it is a season of lessening that somehow leaves us more full, a time of emptying that leaves us replete. We give up things only to discover that we never really needed them, or perhaps that we needed something else entirely. It is rather like cleaning out an old attic and finding treasures we had forgotten we possessed. The act of removal reveals what was hidden; the practice of absence makes presence more acute.

But perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that this season of penance is actually a season of preparation for the greatest joy imaginable. We walk through the desert of Lent toward the oasis of Pascha (Easter). We fast because a feast is coming. Here again, Christianity stands reality on its head in that peculiarly right way it has. The world thinks that fasting is something you do after you have indulged too much; Christianity says it is something you do before you celebrate. The world sees penance as punishment; Christianity sees it as preparation.

This is why, despite all appearances, Lent is not a gloomy season at all. It is serious, yes, but with the seriousness of an athlete training for a race or a bride preparing for her wedding. There is joy in the discipline because there is joy in the anticipation. We are like children cleaning our rooms before a party – the cleaning itself might not be pleasurable, but it is made light by the knowledge of the celebration to come.

The ashes we wear today will be washed away by tomorrow, but the truth they proclaim remains. We are dust, and to dust we shall return – but we are God's dust, and to God we shall return. This is the final paradox of Ash Wednesday: that in marking ourselves with the symbol of death, we proclaim our hope in eternal life. The very ashes on our foreheads are traced in the shape of the cross, making even the symbol of our mortality into a sign of our redemption.

So we begin our Lenten journey, walking into this small desert with joy and trembling. We walk it because Christ walked it before us, and we walk it to walk more closely with Him. We deny ourselves not because what we deny is bad, but because sometimes we need to push away even good things to make room for better ones. We fast from food to feast on prayer, we give up comforts to take up compassion, we empty ourselves to be filled with something more lasting than our own satisfaction.

In the end, Lent teaches us what Christianity has always taught: that the way up is down, that we rise by descending, that the crown comes after the cross. The ashes on our foreheads may look to the world like a sign of defeat, but we know they are really a badge of revolution. For we are the people who believe that death leads to life, that sacrifice leads to glory, that a cross leads to a crown, and that ashes can be more beautiful than gold.

This is the radical promise of Ash Wednesday and the radical journey of Lent. We begin it today, marked with dust and glory, humbled and exalted, empty and full, walking into a desert that will somehow prove to be a garden. It is madness, of course, but it is the madness that has saved the world. And so we go, these forty days before us, carrying our mortality like a banner and our hope like a flame, watching for the first light of Pascha (Easter) even as the ashes fade from our brows.

For we know, with that strange certainty that comes only from faith, that these ashes are not an end but a beginning. They are not a mark of defeat but a declaration of war – war against our own pride, our own complacency, our own satisfaction with less than God. They are a promise written in dust: that from these ashes, as from all our deaths both great and small, God will raise up life.

- The Seeker’s Quill