A Homily for Ash Wednesday
Readings: Joel 2:12-18  2 Corinthians 5:20—6:2   Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Have you ever wished that you could be baptized again? It is an understandable desire, especially when we seek to renew ourselves and regain the path. Besides birth itself, nothing bespeaks new life like baptism.

Many of us were christened as infants, so we have no memory of the event. Indeed, we have only the word of others that it even occurred. A real memory of the day would mean so much! In a way, that is what Ash Wednesday offers us. Here’s how.

Sacraments strengthen and arise from a life of faith, which is why all sacraments contain two essential elements. Movements might be the better word. We give ourselves to God in the sacraments, and God does the same. He gives himself to us. 

Naturally, we focus on what we are doing in the sacraments, but what meaning, what benefit would they have if not for what God does in them? In every sacrament, God gives himself to us. 

God never acts imperfectly, incompletely, which is why God need never repeat himself. Whatever God does, God does once for all. 

Consequently, sacraments that fundamentally alter our relationship with God are never repeated. We are variable, inconsistent and inconstant, but God is not. If we have been baptized, confirmed or ordained in Christ, God has acted, and whatever God does, God does once for all.

It is in our nature as those bound to time, bobbing in its ebb and flow, to renew and recommit ourselves after periods of decline, in the face of new challenges or when confidence itself is shaken. And there are sacraments in which we do just that. 

The Eucharist is the primordial sacrament of renewal. It does not repeat the death and resurrection of Christ because these are eternal, ever-ongoing actions on the part of God. So, while God’s Eucharist never alters, none of us ever celebrates the same Mass twice because time continually changes us. 

The same is true of the sacraments of confession, anointing of the sick and matrimony. These sacraments are stars tracing their arc in the firmament that is God. In each of them, in one manner or another, we renew our baptismal promises.

We call today Ash Wednesday, after the day’s most recognizable feature: We dust ourselves with ashes. But the meaning of the day is drawn from its relationship to the two foundational sacraments of Christian life. 

We celebrate Eucharist today. That is how Christ himself intended that we should ever renew ourselves in him. “Do this in memory of me.” We also turn our faces toward Easter, toward that moment in time that harvested all time, when the cosmos itself was baptized into Christ.

It is time for us, quite consciously, to go back to the death and resurrection of the Christ, to ponder again the meaning—for us—of the cleansing water and nourishing blood that flowed from his side. 

Ashes remind us how dry those waters of baptism might have become for us. Today, we begin the long journey from Ash Wednesday to Pentecost, from the emptiness of the self to the fullness of the Spirit. 

Hopefully, we have never wavered in our commitment to a sacramental life. Whether we have or not, today we want our consciousness to catch up with the Lord’s constancy. We want to remember that we have been reborn.

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.