This Wednesday I’ll be dressed in my liturgical finery, standing by the line of homeless entering the feeding program at St George’s Church and Community Center, at a park under the bridge where the locals gather, and at the corner of a high density shopping center. Some of my colleagues will be doing the same at commuter train stations, airports, hospitals, alehouses, busy pedestrian street corners, and with first responders. I’ll be at locations in my community with a portable sign, brochures, and a container of last year’s palm leaves which have been burned and pummeled into a fine ash. It’s Ash Wednesday, and this has become known as Ashes to Go.¹

I do it, but I’m ambivalent [in the true meaning of the word] about doing so.

I take Ashes to Go into my community in part as an exercise in evangelism. It is part of our calling to bring the Church into the public square. This is my parish, and I have responsibilities to the spiritual welfare of the people in my parish. God meets people in the midst of life. And we, the Church, join with God in meeting people in the midst of their life; in the midst of their busy schedules, in the midst of their work.

For a few unable to escape their work long enough to attend services, Ashes to Go provides a way for a foundation of their faith to take expression. For others, it has been a surprising reminder of faith practiced a long time ago and now renewed. For some this is the first time they have seen the imposition of ashes, and the experience is a new one – something they may or may not add to their spiritual discipline in the future.

This is Ashes to Go, but each year, I am more hesitant doing so.

We are dust, and to dust we shall return is not God’s final word.

On Ash Wednesday, as Lent begins, we are invited to struggle against everything that leads us away from love of God and our neighbor by exercising the discipline of Lent: repentance, fasting, prayer, and works of love. These become the specific occasions and opportunities for our spiritual renewal during this season of Lent. In the Lenten discipline, we focus our lives on Christ’s self-sacrificing passion, death, and resurrection, which has brought us acceptance, forgiveness and redemption by God. Through that same discipline, we make a loving response to God.

And that’s my hesitation. Ashes to Go is a way of bringing the Church into the public square, serving the parish. But the imposition of ashes is not merely an individual act, a stand-alone ritual. The imposition of ashes is part of a larger liturgy calling us to personal confession and entry into the disciplines of Lent. My concern is for those experiencing only Ashes to Go not hearing the call to enter the Lenten journey; not being engaged in the discipline of Lent; and not hearing the whole story.

In the context of the Mass, we are reminded that Jesus Christ giving life to the world is the reason for those forehead ashes. In the Mass, we are reminded that “we are dust, and to dust we shall return” is not God’s final word.

¹ For more information see http://ashestogo.org