Having established your status, the rite goes on to pronounce your doom in the singular form, literally to your face: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” You: You individually, you Bob, Ted, Patricia, and Ashley, are dust and will return to dust.Īll this is conveyed in the action of the rite itself. But nevertheless, the rite recognizes that you are particularly interested in the fate of one boring sinner, yourself. You are average, mediocre, run of the mill. In your sins, you are not even the unique individual you think yourself. Francis’s? To put it even more sharply: your’s or St.
FROM DUST YOU CAME AND TO DUST YOU WILL GO MOVIE
To put it another way: Whose world is more interesting, wider, deeper, more filled with interesting facts and stories, whose conversation would be more enlightening, in whose world would you rather live: the average movie star’s or St. Think of people you have known who relate everything that happens in the world around them to themselves, almost always with either calculation or resentment: Think not just how miserable they are but how bone-wearyingly boring, because their world is so small. As a sinner, you’re much less original and interesting that you would be if you were a saint. It is a turning in upon yourself that makes you less you.
You are just “man.” Sin destroys personality. Note that as a sinner you are merely an example of a category, “man.” You are not Bob or Ted or Patricia or Ashley. It is not so much that we fell with Adam into sin, as that we jumped into it with our eyes wide open and a cheery wave to the crowd. It is important to remember that we are not only children of Adam but willing children of Adam. “Remember, man”: Remember, you descendent of Adam remember, in the phrase from the Narnia Chronicles, son of Adam, daughter of Eve remember, original sinner, that you are dust and to dust you shall return. So it begins as a statement of our identity and the consequences of our identity. The first movement dramatizes the truth that “in Adam all die.” The words “you are dust and to dust you shall return” are a quote from Genesis, which comes at the end of the list in which God tells Adam (“man” in Hebrew) what his disobedience will cost him, which is also a description of what our disobedience is costing us. The Mass now offers two things for the priest to say as he imposes the ashes: either “Repent, and believe in the Gospel” (listed first) or “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We can keep the word man in mind even if it is not said out loud. The word is, unfortunately I think, absent from the Mass today. It goes, “ Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris.” In the traditional English, “Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.” If I have read the rite correctly, the meaning depends upon the double meaning of man. To see this, we will have to use the original Latin version. As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” The rites points in two directions, one corresponding to “As in Adam all die” and the other corresponding to “In Christ shall all be made alive.” Paul’s remark in 1 Corinthians that “since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. Even if this meaning was unintended as the rite developed, it dramatizes St. The Church doesn’t give official explanations of what her rites mean, but here’s what I think what is being said through the imposition of ashes. And, though this isn’t as obvious, it is also a declaration of the good news. Letting someone smear ashes on your forehead while telling you that you are dirt is a statement that you have seen and accepted the facts about yourself, and know they’re not in your favor. Ash Wednesday is the holy day on which you are asked to face the facts about yourself.
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