We are dust, earth, clay, but if we allow ourselves to be shaped by the hands of God, we become something wondrous. We are God’s hope, his treasure and his glory.Īshes are thus a reminder of the direction of our existence: a passage from dust to life. We are the dust of the earth, upon which God has poured out his heaven, the dust that contains his dreams. We are thus a dust that is precious, destined for eternal life. It pleased the Lord to gather that dust in his hands and to breathe into it the breath of life (cf. Centuries and millennia pass and we come and go before the immensity of galaxies and space, we are nothing. The dust sprinkled on our heads brings us back to earth it reminds us that we are dust and to dust we shall return.
We begin the Lenten Season by receiving ashes: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return (cf. HOLY MASS, BLESSING AND IMPOSITION OF THE ASHES
