The Passion of Christ And Ash Wednesday

Feb 25, 2004, 12.01am IST
Janina Gomes.

Lent, the season of fasting, penance and prayer begins today, on Ash Wednesday. The Lenten theme has often been negatively interpreted as a time for self-flagellation rather than empowerment.


However, signing the heads of Christians with ashes on this day is viewed today as a positive symbol: Repent and believe in the Gospel or the Good News, often preferred to the old formula, “Dust thou art and into dust thou shall return”. The good news with which the Gospel empowers us is that we are all sons and daughters of God, the King, and so should view ourselves with the empowering eyes of our divine inheritance.

Edwina Gately, a woman who worked with homeless and abused women once narrated this story: Once upon a time a country was invaded and the king was killed but his children were rescued by servants and hidden away. The smallest, an infant daughter, was reared by a peasant family who did not know she was the king’s daughter. Brought up in the peasant household, she dug potatoes and lived in poverty.


One day an old woman from the forest approached the young woman who was digging potatoes and asked her: “Do you know who you are?” And the young woman said,: “Yes. I’m the farmer’s daughter and a potato digger.” The old woman said: “No, no you are the daughter of the king” — and disappeared dramatically back into the forest.

After that, the young woman still dug potatoes, but she dug them differently. There was something different, almost elegant, in the way she held her shoulders — and there was light in her eyes because she knew who she was. The young woman knew she was the daughter of the king.

Robert J Wicks says the message of empowerment through love is to go from place to place saying to the dispossessed, to the lonely and the downtrodden, “Do you know who you are?” The poor may continue to dig potatoes, or engage in whatever jobs that is their lot, but now, they will do it with a sense of dignity.


In today’s globalised world, where human beings are often treated in the workplace as dispensable commodities and in a society where human worth is measured by the money one possesses, the power one wields and the social circles one moves in, Lent is a time to remind the potato diggers of the world, that they have an immeasurable human worth. They are all in a sense, true princes and princesses and the sons and daughters of the king. They have the capacity to transcend their potato digging lives and empower themselves and others. Outer change first begins by effecting inner change.

Empowerment follows from rea-lising who we truly are. The well-known parable of the prodigal son is really the story of a son who fled from his true self, family and extended family and squandered his time. Once he came to his senses and realised who he truly was, he could return to his inner home and his loving father who received him with open arms.

Sometimes, weighed down by our own personal problems and limitations, we find it difficult to reach out to others in love. It is so much easier to be preoccupied with ourselves and our concerns. The Lenten season calls for going beyond our narrow mental and spiritual visions. On Ash Wednesday, we remind ourselves that we are all children of God, the King. We also affirm that we have come from dust and will return to dust. Theologian Karl Rahner says: “We are nothingness that is filled with eternity; death that teems with life; futility that redeems; dust that is God’s life forever”.