Remember thou art dust…
My Lenten reading this year is Romano Guardini’s The Lord, a classic spiritual work from the mid-20th century. Although of Italian descent, Guardini lived almost his entire life in Germany. He was a priest, a theologian, and a spiritual writer, as well as one of the pioneers of the liturgical movement. The Lord is an extended meditation on Jesus as encountered in the Gospels and reflects the growing influence of the biblical movement in Catholicism during this period.
From time to time over the next 40 days, I may post excerpts from The Lord that strike me in a particular way. Here is one from the chapter “Baptism and Temptation,” where Guardini writes of Jesus’ temptation in the desert as depicted by Luke:
Once more forces collect for the assault-the mountain-peak view of the vast glory of the world, offering itself to him who is truly competent to rule! How the sensation of spiritual strength must swell the breast at Satan’s words! The will to power increased with the sense of exalted dignity and importance! Never was the costliness of earth more deeply felt than by Jesus’ greatest and most sensitive of hearts; sweet and potent, it must have hummed in his blood, calling up all his powers of creativeness and ownership. The greatness you feel in you, mighty one that you are, what are you going to do with it? Squander it on the paltriness of the poor or the stuffiness of the pious? On the mission of a wandering preacher? You were born to rule; the power and responsibility of a true sovereign await you! Tremendous temptation!
Guardini is writing in the post-WWII period and his words reflect his experiences with Nazism and its cult of the übermensch. But the “will to power” is a recurring theme in human history and not unique to a particular time or place. How many modern day Raskolnikovs can be found in the financial industry? Or perhaps, if we are honest with ourselves, we can see him in the mirror when we awake each morning.
While the Ash Wednesday injunction to “repent and believe in the Gospel” is more biblical, I must confess that I miss the older “Remember thou are dust and unto dust thou shalt return.” The shock of being confronted with the certainty of our death is a good way to begin Lent. Sic transit gloria mundi.
All the more amazing : the original German of this fragment was printed in (and evidently stimulated by the confrontation with) Nazi Germany. My edition of Der Herr (Wurzburg: Werkbundverlag, 1937) borrowed from the GTU features the cited text on p. 38. This was the sort of subtle spiritual resistance to the regime of terror that was indeed possible .
When I distribute ashes, I always use the “Remember, man, that you are dust.” Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulvem reverteris.
Thanks for the reminder of Guardini’s wonderful book. At the risk of going off on a tangent, there’s another bit of Guardini I treasure — from Freedom, Grace, and Destiny, in which he points to the wrongness of the common belief that subordination to God means the loss of one’s own person, one’s own self-hood.
Such a view, he says, is true only if we conceive of God as an “Other,” as one might conceive of a leader (or Führer, I suppose). “Normally,” says Guardini, “it is true that a being not myself must be an other so that if I obey him, I am obeying someone else.” But this is not true in the case of God, because “God is not ‘an other,’ but is that Being in whom my existence is established, my truth preformulated, and the significance of my existence contained. If I come to God in knowledge, love, and activity, I discover myself in Him. . . When I obey, I am acting in conformity with my true nature and so, rightly understood, I stand in my proper position within myself.” (pp. 81-2)
I’ve heard at least one priest recently saying both formulas, alternating between them. Seemed like a good way to keep it interesting, plus everyone ended up hearing both a few times over!
“While the Ash Wednesday injunction to “repent and believe in the Gospel” is more biblical, I must confess that I miss the older “Remember thou are dust and unto dust thou shalt return.” ”
I love that both are permitted (and aren’t there other suggested/permissible formulas as well?). It opens up more aspects/dimensions to Lent tht way.
There are two sets of choices for Morning Prayer psalms and canticle on Ash Wednesday. One is penitential, the other more joyful. I chose the latter this morning to begin my Lenten prayer journey, and found it provoked a lot of contemplation.
Likewise, there are two Lenten antiphons for the Invitatory, the psalm that begins daily prayer. They are:
Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, who for our sake endured temptation and suffering
and
Today if you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your heart.
I alternate between them from year to year. This year I’m doing the latter, and again found it a refreshing “take” on Lent.
Btw, if for any reason anyone wants to see all of the Invitatory texts gathered into one place, I found this:
http://www.usml.edu/liturgicalinstitute/projects/psalter/Invititory%20Antiphons%2011%2008.pdf
Thomas Merton once wrote that the Spanish language is bossy and unsentimental. In the days when you could say it, he wrote that even a woman can’t sound sentimental in Spanish. I agree with him. Spanish is also a beautiful language and has a degree of irony that is almost unimaginable to people who do not speak it. The Spanish mystical tradition affirms the cross bluntly. Affirming the cross is an expression that tells us that God’s will cannot be deterred even in dying. This tradition tells us that if we look for where God is hidden in our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, we might meet Him. This tradition reminds us that prayer is warfare to the last breath. Our excuses for not praying and our dryness are traces of death we try to politely circumnavigate. Ironically they are also a witness to the Spirit’s ever-effacing willingness to “come to our aid.”
In our parish this morning, we heard “Remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” for the first time in many, many years.
This might seem like a tired old question, and perhaps I’ve missed something obvious, but what do you say to your kids when they question you why the Gospel reading today spoke of the necessity of having clean faces when we fast, and of praying in secret, just before we all got a big, messy, conspicuous smudge of ashes on our faces?
The Latin word puluis (gen. pulueris) is used of any sort of dust but it also used of ash, and in particular of the ash/powder/dust that remains immediately from cremation or simply after a long period of decay under the right conditions This suggest the reason why ash is used is the ceremony. The powder suggests the ultimate remnants of a human body. The words “quia puluis es et in puluerem reuerteris” come right from the Vulgate (“because you are dust and you shall turn back into dust”). There is also, of course, a reference to the play on Adam/adamah–the latter word meaning earth, ground in Hebrew. Adam is the man made of earth, the earthling(?). Unfortunately the NAB renders Gen. 3:19 “For you are dirt and to dirt you shall return”. I hope that unseemly version does not creep into the liturgy under the cover of scholarly rectitude!
I was warned that I would return to dust this morning and was delighted to hear the familiar words, but “Remember, man” is difficult and the minister omitted “man”, There is no good single word for “homo” is this context in current usage. The rendering “man” has a comical effect, to my ear at least.
Jeff
For 60 of my 85 years I have asked your childrens question and never got a satisfactory answer. This morning I hesitated again but decided that the contradiction was less important than that my comminity would share in the reminder of our transience.
Jeff, Mary
Is there really an inconsistency? The ashes are meant to remind us of our earthly origins and of our mortality. Receiving ashes is not a way of showing off ones pentinential practices, if any. In any case it is a one day affair. Lent lasts for forty. It is possible to receive ashes and do nothing thereafter.
Does anyone know whether the Eastern Churches have a ceremony like the rite of Ash Wednesday? I ask because the Greek version of Gen. 19:3 uses a word that simply means earth (You will return to earth), but the Hebrew text has a word that is semantically well represented by the Vulgate’s puluis. Should we thank St. Jerome for the Ash part of Ash Wednesday?
According to the secular magisterium, Wikipedium: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lent
“There are several holy days within the season of Lent.
• Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent in Western Christianity.
• Clean Monday (or “Ash Monday”) is the first day in Eastern Orthodox Christianity.”
Substantiated by this: http://christianity.about.com/od/holidaytips/qt/whatisashwednes.htm
“Lent for Eastern Orthodox churches begins on Monday and Ash Wednesday is not observed.”
Joe and Mary,
“The ashes are meant to remind us of our earthly origins and of our mortality.”
I suppose that’s it. The ashes are meant as a “memento mori” more than as a specific reference to the practices described in today’s Gospel reading.
FWIW, I helped distribute ashes yesterday at one of the services. Two people asked me for ashes to bring home for parents who are unable to come to church, so I sprinkled a few into Kleenexes for them. The ritual means a lot to people – perhaps in ways that can be difficult to articulate.
It is not just the Eastern Orthodox church that starts lent on Monday. I belong to the Syro Malabar Church, one of the 22 sui iuris Oriental Churches in the Catholic Communion. We also start Lent on Monday and there is no ‘Ash’ day. The same is the case with the other sui iris church here (India), the Syro Malankara church.
Jim
Our church provided individual envelopes with ash and a prayer for anyone who wanted to bring some for a homebound person.
One of my favorite quotations in the whole world comes from Guardini. (I think it’s in his book _The Virtues_.) It begins by asking, “What is greatness?” then gives a wonderfully lofty yet powerful definition. One reason I love is that there is nothing particularly religious about it. Yet I think it is something that many believers, agnostics, and atheists would agree on.
What is “greatness”? It is not something quantative; not what we mean when we say: “The number one hundred is greater than the number ten.” Rather, it is a manner of thinking and of meeting the world. It mean the strictness of man’s demands upon himself. The willingness to stand for what is important. A breath of vision and boldness of decision. A depth of involvement, originality, and creative power