Homily for Ash Wednesday

March 5, 2025
St. Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Joel 2:12-18
Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 14 and 17
2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

“Spare, O LORD, your people, and make not your heritage a reproach, with the nations ruling over them! Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?'”

This question spoken by the prophet, Joel, is a question at the heart of our Lenten season of repentance for us to ponder in reference to our relationship with God. Where is our God?

We begin Ash Wednesday by receiving ashes placed on our foreheads. These ashes are what is left from the palms from last Palm Sunday, when they were waved triumphantly upon the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem in expectation of Him as the Messiah who would Israel a great and powerful nation again. We know that these expectations foisted upon God are not in accord with His plans for establishing His Kingdom through His Son — so these expectations of earthly greatness burn to ashes.

Yet, the ashes of these unconverted expectations are not wasted by God because from them we see the sign of the Cross that marks our faces and answers the question pondered by each other and ignored by this world: “Where is our God?” Our God is revealed in the Cross. The ashes that symbolize our sinfulness and attachment to sin, through the Cross of His Son, Jesus Christ, are transformed into signs of hope of eternal life because “For our sake He made Him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

“The wages of sin is death.” The ashes that are placed upon our heads symbolize that spiritual death that is the fruit of whatever we put our trust in that is not God. The ashes are not only burnt palms but can be our claims of self-sufficiency in finance or political power, seeking only God’s approbation and assistance with our plans — anything that does not involve our surrender to God and His Son’s Cross ends in death. We too will return to dust and ashes, but the ashes of sin and death can be transformed by the forgiving, reconciling, and redeeming Cross of Christ that is the only path to eternal life.

We are given this season of Lent by the Church to reflect on how God answers the question asked by the unbelievers and revealed by the Prophet Joel, “Where is their God?”

It is a question that God prompts us to ask within ourselves, through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.