Remember...

Imagine:

Here then is Jesus standing, facing the blind man.  In his left hand he has the dusty dirt into which he has spit.  With the thumb of his right hand he is grinding the dirt and spittle into mud.  Then with that thumb he rubs the mud on the closed eyelids of the blind man, saying to him “go and wash in the pool of Siloam (where I send you) and you will see.”

And now here is any one of dozens of priests and lay people over the years who have, on the 64 Ash Wednesdays in your life, standing facing you.  In their left hand they hold a small bowl of ashes.  With the thumb of their right hand they rub the crunchy soot on your forehead and say…

Do you recall the first word that they used to say, before the dust to dust?  The word was “Remember.”  For the last several years, the incantation has been something about having courage to live the Gospel.  The change seemed refreshing.  The old one had seemed morbid, calling us to remember that we came from dust and we would return to dust.  I didn’t like the old words and their reminder of death.

As I imagine the parallel posture and gesture between Jesus and the blind man and the persons smearing ashes on my forehead each Ash Wednesday, I am struck by this, halfway through Lent, as a reprise of that same Ash Wednesday action, calling me to life. 


I remember the feeling that surrounded and filled me 18 months ago when I thought I might soon die.  Somehow, bereft of future I was free to appreciate the present.  I saw as I had never seen before.  In the 18 months since then, I confess that my eyes have gradually closed.  I fail to notice the gifts in my life, the beauty that calls me to fullness.

I think that four weeks ago as we began Lent we were called not to darkness, but to light, not to death, but to life.  Perhaps we can imagine ourselves the beggar, feeling the grainy mud being rubbed by Jesus into our blind eyes and feel the crunching of it, the pressure of the thumb that is familiar to us, as we push back toward the pressure, not to be pushed back.  Perhaps we can consider to what we have been blind, and what, when we look at it, will call us to life in presence in the moments we are given, when our eyes are opened by Grace. 

We have the second half of Lent to prepare to accompany Jesus in his passion, as he once again shows us that the future (including the certainty of death) is nothing to fear, that God is present, that where we are sent by Grace is where we will see.