I don't remember the last
time I failed to get ashes on Ash Wednesday. This year, I got
them at St. John the Evangelist on 13th Street in downtown
Philly. I never go there for any other reason, but their ashes
operation is a very streamlined, in-and-out affair designed for
working people who don't have time for an hour-long mass in the
middle of the work week. You walk in, light a candle if you want,
say a prayer, and then the priest (who is usually a guy from Lesotho
or Manila or Lima) comes out and conducts a five-minute service.
Then two or three helpers emerge from behind the altar and everybody
in the joint gets ashes.
The priest or helper
always says something as he (or she) applies the smudge. In the
Middle Ages, it was usually “Memento mori,” which means “Remember
death.” Bit of a buzz-kill, of course, but that's what Ash
Wednesday is about. It's the beginning of Lent, which is the last
forty days (actually forty-five) of Christ's life, so a remembrance
of mortality is a big part of the story.
The ritual sounds grim,
but in fact, it's not. When you start your day with a reminder, in
no uncertain terms, that your end is nigh, you walk out of church
with a need to affirm life and the vital principle and to, in the
words of the late Warren Zevon, “Enjoy every sandwich.” That's
what always happens to me, in any case. Getting ashes is supposed to
be the most depressing thing that happens to you that day, so that
afterwards you walk around smiling and cheerful and you pat little kids on the head.
Except it's not the Middle
Ages anymore. For the past ten years or so, the homily I've been
given with my ashes has been “Turn away from sin and read the
Gospels.” Wimpy stuff. Pitiful, really. If there were Catholic
restaurants that served fortune cookies, it's what you would get in a
Catholic fortune cookie. But that's modern feel-good Catholicism for
you. It's a big reason there aren't as many Catholics as there used
to be, at least in the U.S.
But this Wednesday, I got
lucky. I approached one of the helpers and as she loaded up her
thumb with a double shot of the blackest, she looked me right in the
eye and said, “Remember---you are dust and to dust you will
return.” And she said it like she meant it.
Awright!!!
In a way, getting ashes
these days is more fun than it used to be. When I was a kid, it
seemed like most of the foreheads you saw on Ash Wednesday had a nice
black smudge on them. Those were the days in Philly when everyone
knew one or more working-class Catholic families with six kids, all
of whom went to parochial school. My father, who practiced law in
the 50's and 60's, once told me about running into a lawyer named Jacob Goldstein on
Ash Wednesday and
being surprised to see ashes on Jacob's noggin.
“Jake,” he asked him,
“did you convert?”
“No, Stan, but I've got
a jury trial today.” Expecting seven or eight Catholics on the
jury, Jacob was taking no chances. Back then, getting ashes in
Philly was no big deal. Even Jews had them---well, a few Jews
anyway.
Today, however,
ash-wearers are sufficiently rare that I usually get told by someone, seriously, that I have some dirt on my head and I should
wash it off. I see people looking at me, puzzled, and then
realizing, “That's right. Yesterday was Mardi Gras.” I like it
much better this way. Before, I was just another smudge in the
crowd; now I'm slightly exotic and even somewhat annoying. Being
honest now, one reason I never miss a year is that I know there's a
certain number of cranky atheists who look at me and get pissed
off.
After church, I went to my
job at Target, where I typically see hundreds of people during an
eight-hour shift. Only ten or twelve (all women) had ashes, but
because ash-wearers are now so rare, a guild mentality has developed
in places like Philly where those of us who sport the smudge are a
distinct minority. You notice each other. You make eye contact.
“Oh, yeah,” you think, “we cool.” At one point, I was
bending over and arranging some bread on a shelf so the customer who
came up couldn't see my head until she spoke to me. I looked up and
there, two feet away, was a forehead just like mine. She was
startled. “Dominus vobiscum,” I told her, and made the sign of
the cross. It was a second or two before she remembered she wanted
to know where we keep the cream cheese.
The ashes even provide an
introduction. I never speak about anything personal with customers
unless they initiate it, but I did on Ash Wednesday, telling
several of the young ladies about how I scored big at St. John's that
morning. All were suitably impressed. They were young enough that
some had never heard anything but the turn-away-from-sin,
fortune-cookie stuff.
My favorite Ash Wednesday
experience occurred in St. Louis (not an especially papist burg),
about twenty-five years ago. I was there on business, had flown in
that morning, and was stuck in a law office until early afternoon
when we broke for lunch.
Early that morning I had
ascertained there was a cathedral downtown, so as soon as I was
released from the high-rise where I had spent the morning, I hauled
ass about ten blocks to the church, sailed through the (one) open
door and found, in an enormous structure with a nave straining up to
heaven itself---nobody. An open Catholic church downtown in a major
American city always has some poor bastard in one of the pews,
praying for something-or-other, but this one, in St. Louis MO on Ash
Wednesday afternoon, had nobody but me. I approached the altar,
genuflected (ask a Catholic what that means), and sat myself down in
the front row. There was only so much time I could spend there. I
only had an hour for lunch.
Five minutes passed.
Then, the door just behind
the pulpit opened slightly and a woman peeked out, saw me, and shut
the door. I thought about this for a minute, then advanced into what
is called (I think) the presbytery, where the mass is done, and
knocked on the door. Thirty seconds passed and the door was opened
by the same woman. I introduced myself, explained my mission, and
asked if there were some way to get my ashes.
“That was all over an hour ago,” she said, and gave me a long look. “OK, I'll
see.” And the door closed.
Time passed. Minutes.
Was I being so terribly unreasonable? It's Ash Wednesday, it's only
about one o'clock, and this is the big church in downtown St.
Louis. I mean, what am I---a burglar?
Finally, the door flew
open and a tiny man, shrunken with age, looked up at me. He had to
be 80 years old and though he was wearing the backward collar, he
seemed otherwise disheveled, as if roughly awakened, recently.
“Ashes?” he said.
“You want ashes?”
I explained my quest,
apologizing all the while. But now I felt terrible because the
situation was suddenly rather obvious. This venerable geezer had been up
since 4 am on Ash Wednesday duty, had planted smudges on hundreds
of heads and done two or three masses, and finally he had retired
to the rectory for his soft-boiled egg and a dry martini, and had
fallen asleep in front of “The Price Is Right.” And then I
came along.
“Fine,” he said,
shutting me up. “Wait here.” He went back inside and reappeared
a minute later with a dish of black ash. Loading up, and with a
flick of his wrist, he punched me in the head with his thumb and
smeared the results across a wide swath. “Turn away from Satan,”
he told me, “and read yer Gospels. OK???” An instant later, he
was gone and the door was shut in my face. In the silent, empty
cathedral, the slam of the door made me shiver. It was the sound of
doom itself.
Copyright2015MichaelKubacki
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