Transcript:
Greetings beloved in Christ. The Lenten season is upon us, and we began this season with Ash Wednesday. All over the Episcopal Church in Colorado, all over the Episcopal church in the world, the faithful will gather for Ash Wednesday service for the liturgy of repentance and the imposition of ashes.
As many of you know, these are no ordinary ashes. These ashes are made from palms which were blessed on Palm Sunday and burned so that our liturgical year is connected. These ashes will be imposed in the sign of the cross on those who gather for Ash Wednesday service, and the ashes are a symbol, an outward, visible sign of an internal reality of repentance. We are told in the First Testament scriptures that many showed their repentance by donning sackcloth and ashes, and our ashes on Ash Wednesday remind us that we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, that we all have cause to repent, to ask and seek forgiveness.
Our ashes are also a sign of our mortality. The First Testament tells us that we are dirt that God breathed life into, and all of us go down to the dust when we die ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Our ashes remind us that our life is short, and yet whether we live or whether we die, we are God’s possession. We are called to live in this world as conduits of God’s love and light. While we draw breath, we are called to be reconcilers of a broken world.
I encourage you, find an Ash Wednesday service near you. Whether you do it early, early in the morning or late in the evening, find a way to remind yourself that all of us have cause to repent, that all of us will die and leave this mortal realm. Yet even in that, we make our song Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Blessings.