Anxious to clean the fireplace, I distractedly dumped the ashes into a cardboard box, placing it in an adjacent storage room to await future deposits. The “fireplace smell” seemed to linger in the air but I did not think about it again.
Two days later, a friend who was staying with me asked me about the smell, wondering if I knew what it was. I did not, but she did. Apparently I hadn’t waited long enough for the ashes to cool before placing them in the box. Still alive with unseen sparks, they had smoldered through the box into the carpet, burning a hole the size of a Frisbee through the carpet and into the wooden floor beneath. Embarrassed and grateful, I emerged from that experience a sadder-but-wiser Lenten participant.
On Ash Wednesday, we receive ashes to remind us of death and to remind us of life. Ashes remind us of all the little deaths we endure – betrayals, losses, lies we are told, pains we suffer and then we are to remember that even from ashes, new life can emerge. Even when we feel there is nothing left inside us, a spark may still be darting about, alive enough to motivate us into action. As devoid of life as we have ever felt, God’s spark, always smoldering inside us, can still bring about good and enable us to offer the world a spark of hope.
Pray as we begin the Lent that you may connect with the ashes of someone’s life and offer encouragement that their light has not been extinguished; fast this Lent and burn through your hunger pains in order to feel the hunger of those facing real starvation; give alms this Lent that God’s spark might survive injustice, war, hatred, and fear.
May the ashes we receive today burn within us throughout Lent, preparing us not for death but for life.
Source: Connect: Uniting Word and World, February 25, 2009, page 6; slightly adapted.
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