We began the journey of Lent with these words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” That is true, but it is only half the truth. The other half of the great truth is that love is stronger than death.
–The Rt. Rev. Dr. Douglas John Fisher, Bishop of Western Massachusetts
Dear People of St. David’s,
When I woke up on “Ash Thursday” I noticed two things: 1) Lent Madness, as it has for 16 years, provided me with the impossible choice of voting for one lover of God over another. (If you don’t know about Lent Madness, a game which coined the usage “Ash Thursday,” follow the link and be prepared to fall into church-geekiness of the highest order.) The second thing I noticed is that even after washing my face, the faintest outline of the Cross was still visible on my forehead.
That ashy Cross! A yearly reminder of our mortality. I could tell you many touching stories about imposing ashes. Two images come back to me every year: the infant in arms, whose mother held her baby up to me to receive the imposition. How mysterious it felt to instruct that newborn to remember her eventual death. The devoted former parish administrator who lay dying in her bright and sunny bedroom. She wanted ashes, even though she surely needed no reminder of death.
Wearing sackcloth and covering oneself with ashes has, for millennia, been a way that humans acknowledge their sinfulness and proclaim their mourning. I think of Job, who exacerbates the whole situation by sitting on a dung heap. Life is not good, and everyone should know it. There are many other Biblical examples of sackcloth and ashes, and you can use Google just as easily as I can, but here’s the thing: nowhere in the Bible is there a direction to make the sign of the Cross with the ashes.
After I imposed the ashes on my former parish administrator, we shared the Holy Eucharist. That is, after acknowledging the death that was very present, we acknowledged the Life that held us both close. I think that acknowledgment of life is why our yearly ashes are imposed with the sign of the Cross. We will die, yes, but also, we shall live.
Every time we baptize a new Christian, welcoming them into the life of Christ, we then anoint them with oil, making the sign of the Cross on their forehead. “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever,” the priest says. It is that Cross that reminds us that we are alive and loved. God’s love is a bond that is unbreakable, even by death.
It is important to reflect on our mortality, to remember those things that we have not done, those people whom we have not served, those sins that we have not given up. We reflect and we try hard to do better. The church teaches us that God is pleased by our human attempt to live closer to the examples of wholeness and holiness that we have been given.
When we fall short, we fall back on the truth that God loved us first. We are marked as Christ’s own, forever. I quoted my Bishop at the head of this letter. (Church geek note: I am “canonically resident” in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts even though I live and serve in the Diocese of Pennsylvania.) When the clergy gather in Holy Week to renew our ordination vows, we make the sign of the Cross on each other’s foreheads with newly consecrated oil and say, “Remember that love is stronger than death and to that Love you are returned.”
Wishing you a holy and loving Lent,
Nancy+
The Rev. Nancy Webb Stroud
Priest Associate
Published on March 6, 2025