Embracing Mortality

Happenings Article - 2/14/2024

Greetings Holy Apostles Family,

On this day when we celebrate love, give out chocolates, and recall an arrow-firing cherub, I have a loving message for you: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Think I’m crazy? Keep reading!

 

Clergy around the world offer the words above, as they apply the grey remains of palm branches on people’s foreheads. They make the sign of the cross with those ashes in the same place where we are marked as Christ’s own forever in Holy Baptism. As hard as the truth of our transience is to accept, this day is an occasion when we in the Church give it our best shot. 

 

On Ash Wednesday, we hear the truth of our dusty frailty; however, this certainty—that none of us get out of this life alive—flies in the face of so much of the culture around us. Companies in our world love to promote and pedal anything and everything to prevent aging and to avoid death. From workout systems to magic creams to miracle pills advertising agencies pitch us on the idea that if we just fork over some of our precious dollars, we can lengthen our days. With all this death-avoidance in our cultural drinking water, it is no wonder that we buck against our human nature with all our might. Ash Wednesday offers an antidote and another perspective—simply put this service makes us confront that we come from dust, and we return to dust. 

 

We may buck against this emphasis of Ash Wednesday because of culture or even because of instinct. However, embracing mortality allows for us to live into our vocation as human beings. We are not God. We are not infinite. We will not live in these mortal bodies forever. And yet, at the very same time, God made us. God is infinite—and loves us infinitely. God invites us into eternal life, which has already started! Knowing this, we are free to be ourselves—creatures formed from the dust, molded into the likeness of God, and purposed to give God glory by serving our neighbor as ourselves.

 

Today, therefore, I invite you to rest in the good news that you are indeed finite, and not God. You do not have control over all things. You will not live forever. And, while you are mortal flesh and to dust you shall return, you are made good in God’s image, made to worship an infinite God, and made to share God’s eternal love with all whom you meet. 

 

God’s peace be with you,

Seth