![]() And as we approach the altar table on Sunday morning to receive the communion elements, the celebrant reminds us to âtake them in remembrance that Christ died for you.â At our baptism, priest or minister anointed us with oil in the sign of the cross, and we were âmarked as Christâs own for ever.â In our daily prayers we cross ourselves in the name of the Trinity. They dare not forget who they are nor where they came from.Īs Christians, remembering takes us back to our roots in the cross. To this day, the Jews begin the feast of Passover with a recitation of the great events of their history and redemption. They commemorate events thousands of years ago when God led Moses and the people of Israel from burning bush and through scorching desert sands into the freedom of the Promised Land. The Jews, our spiritual ancestors, still celebrate Passover. Like sparrows bathing in dry sand, we are paradoxically cleansed and renewed in the dust of our Ash Wednesday remembrance.Īll that we do as the people of God is in some measure a recollection of what God has done for us. We recollect these things not because we can alter what has been but because in the act of remembering and repenting we are transformed and made new. But most of us also remember our own vulnerability and deficiencies and our shame at how we have wounded others. They provide stability and strength in a world grown ephemeral and uncertain. We recall the milestones of our lives â the births, baptisms, weddings, and graduations. Remembering what has come before is not a bad way to start anything important. Across nave and chancel our shared human fate is on display for all to see. The dust of our failings and sin reminds us of our common heritage. The withered remnants of once green palm branches, burned on Shrove Tuesday and reduced to the ash of todayâs solemn Ash Wednesday ritual, bring to mind the setbacks and regrets of the year gone by those things we might wish to forget but somehow cannot because they have been seared into our memory. Our Lenten season of repentance originates in the dust and fragments of what we have done and of those things we have left undone. On Ash Wednesday, we are brought back down to earth that we might become heirs of the promised kingdom of heaven. A NASA scientist participating earlier this year in the recovery of the Stardust space probe describes it this way, âAll the atoms on earth and in our bodies were in stardust before the solar system formed.â And, he might have added, to stardust they shall return. They bring us together as nothing else can. The ashes of this day bear an uncanny resemblance to what will be left of us all a thousand years from now. Our time together is short, and our journey has an end. âEarth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.â âIn the midst of life we are in death,â is the way the burial liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer puts it. As we reflect on those things that have defined our lives for good or evil and made us who we are, we also remember that we share a common fate and end. âRemember,â says priest or minister as a cross of ash and dust is traced on our brows, âthat you are dust, and to dust you shall return.â It is a sober beginning to the serious business of Lenten prayer and penitence. The season of Lent begins with one word: Remember. ÂRemember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.â BCP 265
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