Fire we can Touch
Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message
March 7, 2014
Often
in Chinese, the construction of the ideogram tells you how the idea represented
is understood. The Chinese
character for “ashes” (above), pronounced huī, combines the symbol
for a hand (the two lines on the upper and left hand margins of the character)
with a smaller character for “fire.” The
idea is that ashes are “fire that can be handled.”
Yesterday
was Ash Wednesday, and in our liturgy we heard a lot about dust and ashes as
symbols of penitence and mortality. It is important to remember that ashes are
“fire we can touch.” The ashes
imposed are the remnants of last year’s Palm Sunday branches celebrating the
Lord’s arrival in Jerusalem before his Passion. The link with Holy Week is clear, and with
it the link to Easter Sunday, and, at the end of the Great Fifty Days of
Easter, the fire of Pentecost and the descent of the Holy Spirit. So
too can the reference “you are dust and
to dust you shall return” be understood as acknowledgment that we are
part of
the great cosmic engine, the carbon and oxygen atoms of our makeup
coming from
the furnaces of exploding stars hundreds of millions of years ago,
"stardust, billion-year old carbon" in the words of the song
"Woodstock."
Lent
is the season where we take such great themes, take hold of them small, and put them to practical
use: connecting better with the
Ineffable, the Perfect, the Beautiful, and Love Itself through acknowledging
our limitations, failings, and impermanence.
Lent’s ashes are indeed fire we
can handle.
St.
Columba of Iona wrote the following prayer about such fire:
Kindle in our hearts, O God,The flame of love that never ceases,That it may burn in us, giving light to others.May we shine in your temple,Set on fire with your eternal light,Even your Son Jesus Christ,Our savior and redeemer.
Grace and Peace, Fr. Tony+
(Thanks
to Mother Elyn MacInnis for the kernel of this thought, found in her book Character Reflections.)
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