The season of Lent is a call to conversion…a time of turning around, of changing our direction. It is a time to stop running, to cease our being busy about many things while avoiding the one thing necessary. Lent is an invitation to burrow deeper into the barren desert of our secret selves to rediscover who we really are…not who we are in the world or at world or school or home; nor who we are to our families and friends and lovers; but who we are to ourselves—alone and hungry and naked in the desert with only God watching. The mark of ashes is a sign of sin:  of sins obvious to others, of secret sins known only to ourselves, of deeper inclinations to evil that we may not be completely aware of, of the radical unworthiness that is simply a part of being a creature. It is the sign of our personal sins, and of our compliance with the evil in the world. All that sin marks us out for death. We receive the ashes in the form of a cross. That signifies our belief that the cross has overcome evil at its roots, that the death of Jesus is stronger than any number of sins we could possibly commit, that where sin abounds just there does grace more abound.

Ash Wednesday is a reminder that God’s justice is blended by His mercy. The cross of ashes is God’s annual sign to us---like Spring—that does not have the last word. Under the protection of the cross, we believe that, out of the dead ashes of our past sins, we will come to life again.