That doleful phrase above describes the content and context of our lives. Dust is our beginning and our end, our alpha and our omega. Dust determines our possibilities in this world and embodies our potential for the next world. On this sacred day, we could do well to contemplate our basic material.
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Dust is next to nothing; raw, crude primary matter. It has no taste, no feel, no past, no future - it simply is. Dust is humble, earthy, with nowhere to go, no way to get there and nothing to do inbetween.
Dust is anonymous, undistinguished, one of trillions of specks of gross material. Dust has no distinguishing characteristics, no unniqueness, no identity, no personality. Dust is all over the place, yet always out of place. It is ignored, disdained, swept up, pushed around, thrown away. Dust is the useless but necessary foundation for everything else.Today we are signed, sealed, marked, dusted with a Cross. A Cross is a sign of contradiction, both a curse and a blessing, an embnlem of shame and glory, a symbol of defeat and triumph. Its verticle beam connects heaven and earth; its horizontal beam embraces and enfolds the whole world.
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And what does all this mean? What does it matter at all? It means that the Son of God became dust; and it matters because when His crucified dust was transmitted into the gold of glory, our own dust was injected with new possibilities.
The Cross oF ashes is not a decoration, it is a declaration of our determination to mimic the life of Christ, to mime His defenseless position on a Cross.
The Cross of ashes is not merely a sign that we believe in the redemptive value of Christ's death but that we intend to participate in it.
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The Cross of ashes is our profession of faith in the value of suffering, in the worth of perseverance, in the impotence of that imposter death and the invincibility of life everlasting.+
"You are dust and unto dust you shall return."
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