2025 Ash Wednesday and Lent: Some initial reflections

Yesterday, March 5, churches were filled with worshippers present for this year’s Ash Wednesday Mass and ritual.

As priests and ministers applied ash on the forehead, churchgoers heard this familiar reminder- “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Here are several verses in the Bible with this reminder about our mortal origin and end:

Genesis 3:19 – “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.”

In Job 10:9, 10, we read – “Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the clay, and thou wilt bring me into dust…” and in Job 34:15 –“All flesh shall perish together, and man shall return into ashes.”

In Ecclesiastes 3:20, the Catholic New Revised Standard Version declares – “All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.”

The Contemporary English Version notes – “All living creatures go to the same place. We are made from earth, and we return to earth” and the New American Bible – “Both (beasts and men) go to the same place; both were made from the dust, and to the dust they both return.”

While Ash Wednesday’s message focuses on mortality, the day as well as the following 40 days of Lent remind all about immortality, about life everlasting.

One can read this in Daniel 12:2- “And many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth, shall awake: some unto life everlasting, and others unto reproach, to see it always.”

Mortals were not just earth or dust.

Genesis 2:7(New International Version writes - “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

In the 21st Century King James Version (KJ21) and American Standard Version (ASV), Genesis 2:7 reads as follows (respectively): “And the Lord God (Jehovah God) formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Mortals are both human (from dust) and soul/divine (with God’s breath of life).

Ash Wednesday is a yearly reminder about one’s beginnings/one’s end, one’s short life/ mortality and one’s eternal life/immortality, and one’s present/temporal as well as one’s future/eternal dwelling place.

The 40 days of Lent take all back to the coming of Jesus Christ, God the Father’s beloved Son offered for

our salvation and redemption, for our return to our divinity, for our eternal life with God.

Lent re-lives the life, passion, death, crucifixion of Jesus Christ and, most importantly, the victory of Resurrection, of eternal life and immortality over death and mortality.

Ash Wednesday and Lent prompt us that it is the restoration of our divinity, our immortality as children of God, imbued with God’s breath, that is most important, the key to eternal love, peace, and life with God in His final dwelling place in Paradise.

Meditating on Christ’s short stay on earth guides us to the path towards reclaiming our divine inheritance, through the 3 pillars of Lent: Prayer, Almsgiving, Fasting/Abstinence.

The three pillars are interlinked.

Before He started and all throughout His Ministry, Christ stayed in prayer, constantly carrying on an intimate/active relationship with God daily, obeying His will and commandments - “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22: 37, 39)

Prayer links us tightly to God who reminds us to love, to share our love/life/resources with our neighbor as ourselves (almsgiving). Fasting/abstinence detaches us from this world and attaches us more closely to God.