Ash Sunday

Four days ago was our Ash Sunday.

You see, in this part of China, our small community is not under any parish and is only visited by Fr. Adams, a volunteer priest from Hongkong, on every 1st, 3rd and 5th (if any) Sundays of each month to celebrate mass for us. So you can just imagine the adjustments in our liturgical year celebrations. We have only 2 Sundays of Advent. We have Christmas mass on the Sunday before the actual date. The same goes for our New Year mass. We will have Palm Sunday and Good Friday mass together during the Holy Week. So it is always a blessing to see Fr. Adams flexing, not only his tight schedules, but also the Sunday masses to celebrate the more relevant Catholic events that we will miss in the next 2 weeks.

So the idea of Ash Sunday simply follows this reality.

Anyway, Fr. Adams, during his homily, has added a golden spiritual nugget to the message of Ash Wednesday, the start of our 40-day Lenten season. He beautifully expounded the phrase - "From dust we came and to dust we will return", by suffixing it with - "And with our dust we will glorify God in eternity". Returning to dust is not the end for us even for our physical bodies. It simply takes another natural form while it waits for the time that it will be raised up again during the resurrection of the dead. And with this same purified and sanctified ashes our "new body" will rise up to glorify God in eternity.

Pondering at Fr. Adam's reflection made me understand more about God's plan for us to have an earthly death. It is not to make the final separation of our spirit from our weak, withered, illness-battered physical bodies but to cleanse our bodies from all the effects of years of sinfulness before our spirit can rejoin it in eternal and heavenly praise of God.

Death, as we all know, is not the end.It is the start of the consummation of God's divine plan for our salvation.And on the first day of eternity, we will see and recognize each other in heaven - body and spirit together.

......I believe in the Holy Spirit
The Holy Catholic Church
The communion of saints
The forgiveness of sins
The resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
Amen.

May we all have a meaningful Lenten season.
God Bless.