Ash Wednesday (belated)

"for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

I understand that Ash Wednesday is about purification and penance. It’s just the darned, dust part that seems like overkill. Do I need a special day to be reminded of my own mortality!?! It terrified me as a kid, as did hell, purgatory, limbo and the apocalypse. Catholic school sure got me off to a great start as a worrier. Regardless, we went to mass yesterday evening and received our ashes.

Although I born Roman Catholic, I haven’t been a practicing one for a very long time. Then suddenly, after the media frenzy surrounding the death of Pope John Paul II, the strangest thing happened, I started self-identifying as a Catholic again and even started doing the tourist thing, visiting different Catholic churches. I enjoyed comparing the ritual and music and critiquing the homily. Now, that I moved back here, I’ve been mostly going to the church I went to as a child. I like it. There’s one priest in particular who’s masses I really enjoy.

Now that I’m doing these things again and now that I have the Internet (ring the bell and swing the thurible), I enjoy thinking about and reading about why things are done the way they are. Yesterday, I was thinking about fasting and abstaining. Specifically, I was wondering if not wearing perfume was an appropriate thing to do for lent. I saw no reference to it anywhere. My question was answered at mass (I guess I forgot). It is inappropriate to call attention to one’s fasting and/or abstinence. So, giving up perfume is not a good thing to do. Wow! Perhaps blogging about it is also wrong (didn’t think of that).

Anyway, on the way home, I mentioned my brief confusion to my boyfriend. He proceeded to give me an interesting new perspective on the issue. He explained that when a woman poured some expensive, fragrant oil on Jesus’ head, his disciples were upset by the waste. The oil could have been sold and money given to the poor. Jesus responded, telling them “You will always have the poor with you, but you won’t always have me.” Hence…Jesus approves of grooming products.