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Lenten Reflections Fr. Joseph Gabriel Cusimano OSB

Although by the time you read this Lent will be well underway, I offer this little reflection with the proviso: "better late than never!"

Lent is something of a paradox, a seeming contradiction. One part of the paradox is revealed in the Church's use of ashes and its emphasis on death. "Remember, man, that you are dust and unto dust you shall return." That body of yours, O man, that body that you pamper with pizza and pilsner, that's gonna crumble, O man; you'd better believe it, and start making tears of compunction and repentance for sin!

And yet, at Mass on the First Sunday of Lent the priest opens the Preface with: "Father, all- powerful and ever-living God ... you give us this joyful season." This joyful season. Well, which is it? Are you supposed to weep and mourn, as the prophet Joel exhorts or follow the instruction of Jesus to wash your face, comb your hair, slap on some Brut or Chanel No. 5, and come smelling like your favorite celebrity.

The paradox is real, but it is not solved with an either/or. As with any good paradox, so with the paradox of Lent: the solution is both/ and. Both sorrow and joy; tears and laughter. In a word, the paschal mystery: dying/rising; intertwined.

The first symbol: dust. The formula stems from the Book of Genesis. God's judgment on humanity after His first human beings have rejected Him: "In the seat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you will return" (Genesis 3:19). It is an image that recurs in the Old Testament, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Job. Even Abraham, "father of a multitude of nations" (Genesis 17:4), pleads with the Lord for Sodom from the stance of Adam.'... I who am but dust and ashes".

What does the symbol symbolize? What does dust say to us? With his uncommon insight the late, 20th century, German theologian Karl Rahner phrased it starkly:

Dust ... is the image of the common place. There is always more than enough of it. One fleck is as good as the next. Dust is the image of anonymity: one fleck is like the next, and all are nameless.
It is the symbol of nothingness, because it lies around so loosely, it is easily stirred up. It blows around blindly, is stepped upon and crushed - and nobody notices. ...it has no content, no form, no shape; it blows away, the empty, indifferent, colorless, aimless, unstable booty of senseless change, to be found everywhere and nowhere...(The Eternal Year, 1964 p. 57-63)

I have to accept, experience, endure the dust that I am. Like dust, I am commonplace. I am ordinary. I am Scripture's blade of grass, puff of wind. I am a speck in the universe. I am one of uncounted billions who have blown about this planet. Each day I experience my dust. From the moment I struggled from my mother's flesh, I've been in the process of dying. I am a creature of pain: from adolescent acne through senile forgetfulness, I am reminded of how near to nothing I am. I am a creature of sin: not always sinning but blowing hot and cold, dreadfully small wrapt in the strait jacket of my selfishness, desperately far from the God I ought to love above life itself. I am anxious, perplexed: about myself, about people, about life - frequently losing my way, often adrift like the dust I cannot capture.

Pretty grim? Only if you stop here; only if you stop with the symbol of dust. Because that symbol is incomplete. When on Ash Wednesday our foreheads are dusted with ashes, they are dusted with another symbol, the sign of the cross. And that symbol declares that dust has been redeemed. By taking on our flesh, Jesus became dust. His feet scuffed the dust of Palestine; his sweat bloodied the dust of Gethsemane; with a last loud cry his body joined ours in the dust of death. But the Spirit of God raised Jesus from the dead and with that gave life to our mortal bodies. Ever since Bethlehem and Calvary, the speck of humanity that is me is now "charged with the grandeur of God." (Gerald Manley Hopkins "God's Grandeur") So, while our dusty journey of life mingles gladness and sadness, satisfaction and frustration, high hopes and sometimes near despair, we walk it as risen Christians. We ought to wear the symbols of Lent with awareness, with pride, with hope, with love. Remember that you are dust, but dust that has been redeemed.

 

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