Fr. George Rutler: Ash Wednesday: The Dark Stain of Sin and Death

I used to dread Ash Wednesday because of the endless lines of people coming for ashes. By the end of the day, priests look like coal miners.

Sociologists may condescendingly consider the phenomenon of crowds coming for ashes, when they do not enter a church at other times of the year, a habit of tribal identity. If the mystery of the Holy Trinity, or Christ dying and rising from the dead, confounds limited human intelligence, there is still a spark of the sense that biological life has an end as real as its beginning.

For skeptics, the Easter proclamation “Christ is risen” may seem like an indulgence of romance or wishful thinking, but no one drawing breath can deny that “dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.”

God gives life and does not intend to take it away. He resents mortality, and when he came into the world that he had made good, he wept to see how it had gone wrong. ….

Read more here churchmilitant.com/news/article/ash-wednesday-the-dark-stain-of-sin-and-death