Last Lent, my wife and I decided to get ashes at noon. There were only a few people in the church. At the front was a man and woman holding bowls of ashes. We walked down the long center aisle to arrive at the practice of Ash Wednesday.
The man said to me, “What do you want from Lent?” I was not prepared for this. “Ashes,” I muttered. What else would I be doing here?
He smiled slightly, put ashes on my head, and said, “Repent, and be faithful to the Gospel.”
Back outside, I asked my wife, “What did you say when the woman asked you, “What do you want from Lent?”
“Peace.”
“Better than me,” I said.
But it got me thinking. Is that the right question? Maybe the question is not what we want from Lent, but what Lent wants from us.
The Lenten “ask” is in the ritual. Ashes created from burning the palms of the previous Holy Week are used to mark the sign of the cross on our foreheads. Words clarify the sign: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”
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With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and John Shea, where this article originally appeared.
