Ash Wednesday 2021

While living in Colorado and employing a wood burning stove to heat our home I learned that a damp cloth, or paper towel, wiped through the cool ashes could be used to clean the charred glass of the stove. It worked wonderfully. The ashes had a cleansing quality.

May that be our experience in this Ash Wednesday as the ashes are traced on our foreheads and we are called to repentance with the reminder “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”

Here is another reflection for the day. It is from an Ash Wednesday sermon by St. Augustine.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Live always in this fashion, O Christian; if you do not wish to sink into the mire of this earth, do not come down from the cross.