It begins with some ashes sprinkled on the forehead

On this day, Ash Wednesday, the Catholic Church and other Christians start the time that is called Lent. Originally this was a long preparation for those who want to become Christians. Before it became a tradition in most “Christian” countries to baptise everyone, one would desire to become a Christian after that person falls in love with Christ and His teachings and then starts his preparation for baptism.

The question that comes to my mind for us who are baptised already, and most of us when we were as young as babies, is what does Ash Wednesday and Lent mean to us today?

While sprinkling ashes on the heads of those that attend the ceremony today the minister usually acclaims: You are dust and to dust you will return. Dust was the name of the first man: Adam (Adamah: earth or dust). We see in creation that “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man's nostrils, and the man became a living person.” (Gen. 2:7).

The dust gave us form, shape, image, and the breath gave us life, soul, true being. But we waste most of our time on the image, forgetting that there is God’s breath or life within us. We spend most of the time constructing this image, this external form, the way we look. We depend on how people see us, what impression we give them, what they think about us. We do anything to impress others. But this is just the image we project. It’s not the truth who we are. This is, in reality, false. The truth is the life within, the soul.

Lent, and preparation for baptism, is all about learning how to let go this false image. In reality, those preparing for baptism were preparing for drowning. Something will die on that day. It’s this false image, or ego. And the letting go of what you have worked for to impress everyone feels like dying as it is all you know about yourself.
Jesus speaks so often about this subject when he talks about the “grain of wheat that falls into the ground” (Jn. 12:24), or the “picking up the cross everyday” (Lk. 9:23) or when you “lose your life to find it” (Mt 10:39; 16:25; Lk. 17:33). It’s all about the dying of this false self. We’re often reminded by most theologians that it’s not bad. It’s only false.

Lent is all about letting go of what is false, what is not truly you, what will not live forever, and what will die when you die. Lent is calling us to die before we die. This is calling us not to continue to be hypocrites, as today’s Gospel demands: do not imitate the hypocrites (Mt. 6:1-6, 16-18). We do not do things for others, for their praise, or to win human admiration.

If we’re able to die for what is false then we remain with what is true, the true self or soul, as we Christians love to call it. And what a sense of freedom that would be. Eventually, that’s what will probably happen on the day of our death. But Lent, or rather baptism, calls us to enjoy that new life before.