Lenten Ashes

I was nominally raised a Catholic. A neighbor across the street, a mother of two, was more devout--at least officially--than my parents and operated somewhat as a pious parent proxy to see that I was kept to the official observances of the Catholic faith. I learned much later that she had a serious drinking problem.

On Ash Wednesday, my parents ceded permission to her to take me, my older brother, and her two kids out of Elementary School to the local Catholic Church, St. Monica's in Berwyn, Pa., to observe Ash Wednesday. The service culminated with the rubbing of ash on our foreheads in the symbol of the Cross--signifying repentance--and then we headed back to school, ashes crosses still on our foreheads.

There was a Catholic camaraderie in the Elementary School among the Catholic kids returning. Long gone were the days where the Protestant and Catholic kids would scrap, reliving the traditional animosities of those two spheres of Western Christendom. But, there was a demarcation of sorts and an identification with our faith that was very real to me. The Crosses identified us.

I have never felt at home in the Protestant Church. I suppose that I am intellectually Reformed but emotionally Catholic if that makes any sense. I am a man without a Church. Like the early Reformers, I have no desire to see the Catholic Church destroy herself through poor theology and indulgent abuse. I wish her well, that she would see the error her ways, and repent. I withhold my attendance and affection in a personal attempt to call her back to the simplicity of the Truth, while still embracing mystery, for there is much not understood in the ways of God to man.

Like, why did He bother to create the Universe? It does not seem to be going all that well here on Earth. And, if this is any indication of the prospect of success elsewhere, I am not sure we can make a good case for it. Yet, I know that this is not all there is. This life is what we know so we define our existence by it. Just because it starts badly does not mean that it ends badly in eternity. Perhaps God wants us to  know the terror and destruction of sin, not by faith, but by experience. Evil becomes far less enticing when it wounds and scars us.

I am not sure that I will observe Lent. It feels much too much like "works salvation" to me. An endless attempt to gain favor with God through acts. Leaving our consciences still convicted, for the sin weight is not offset by the works weight on the sin scale. Sin is an offense to God, our mere works have no power to obviate that. Only the Cross obliterates the Curse.

Some Divine Mathematics where two negatives multiply to make a positive. The Cross being transformed from an instrument of torture to a symbol of hope. As the ashes fade from our foreheads...