The rich symbolism of ashes was known already in the Old Testament and in Jewish prayer: to sprinkle one’s head with ashes is a sign of penitence, of the desire of transformation through trial, the crucible, through purifying fire. Certainly, it is only a sign, which intends to signify a genuine spiritual event lived in the Christian’s daily life: conversion and repentance of a contrite heart. This very quality of sign, of gesture, however, if lived with conviction and invoking the Spirit, can impress itself on the body, on the heart, and on the spirit of the Christian, and thus favor the event of conversion.

At one time, in the rite of the imposition of ashes the Christian was reminded above all of his condition of human being taken from the earth and returning to the earth, according to the Lord’s word spoken to Adam the sinner (cf. Gen 3, 19). Today the rite’s significance has been enriched; in fact, the word that accompanies the gesture can also be the invitation made by the Baptist and by Jesus himself at the beginning of their preaching: ‘Repent and believe in the Gospel’… To receive the ashes means to become aware that the fire of God’s love consumes our sin, to receive the ashes in our hand means to perceive that the weight of our sins, consumed by God’s mercy, is a ‘small weight’, to look at those ashes means to reconfirm our Easter faith: we will be ashes, but ashes destined for the resurrection. Yes, at our Easter our flesh will arise and God’s mercy will consume by fire our sins in death.

In living Ash Wednesday Christians only reaffirm their faith of being reconciled to God in Christ, their hope of rising one day with Christ to eternal life, their vocation to charity that will never have an end. The day of ashes is the announcement of the Easter of each one of us.

Enzo Bianchi