“We confess our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people … our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work … our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us.”Īnd Cathie and I will offer to mark people’s forehead with a cross of ashes. We will offer to pray with people - prayers that name our failings and our striving to change: “We confess to you and to one another, and to the whole communion of saints in heaven and on earth, that we have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed,” our Ash Wednesday litany bids us to say. We will offer “the imposition of ashes” to people in the street. On Wednesday, my colleague Catherine Caimano and I will put on cassocks and surplices, and go to a corner near Duke University Hospital with small containers of ashes and copies of a litany of repentance from the Book of Common Prayer. This year, I will be joining many Episcopal priests in taking the public witness of Ash Wednesday one step further.
This is a rare day when I cannot and could not hide my Christian commitments and my Christian aspirations, even if I wanted to. Walking around all day with a gash of gray ash across one’s forehead - this is among the most visible Christian things I do each year. There is something decidedly public about Ash Wednesday.
