By Fr Pat Amobi Chukwuma
The 2025 Lenten Season has begun. It is a Jubilee Lent. Therefore the mortification we are undertaking this special year should be mixed with jubilation. Lent is a period of 40 days of penitence before Easter. Moses did his own Lent at Mount Sinai where he encountered God in prayer and fasting for forty days and forty nights. Jesus Christ our Saviour prayed in the desert and fasted for forty days and forty nights. The number 40 is very symbolic. It signifies completeness or fullness. No wonder it is said that a fool at forty is a fool forever.
The Lenten Season begins on Ash Wednesday. Historically speaking, it was Pope Gregory the Great who established Ash Wednesday in 601 A.D. The signing of the forehead with ashes in the shape of a cross is believed to have started during his papacy. But the actual roots can be traced back to the Old Testament and Jewish fasting practices. The Jews either sat in ashes or covered themselves with ashes as a sign of repentance.
On a certain Ash Wednesday, I was liturgically performing the signing of ashes on the forehead of each believer in my pastoral jurisdiction. Normally on this special day, none believers also troupe into the church to receive the ashes. Even mental deranged persons also come. It happened that a young man in tattered clothes knelt at the altar rail to receive the ashes.
As I was signing him with the ashes on his forehead I said in a loud voice, “You are dust. Unto to dust you shall return again.” He sharply removed my hand, jumped up and shouted, “I am not dust. I am a human being of excellent qualitative analysis!” The fact that this mentally deranged man spoke such high grammar shows that he was educated. The congregation was thrown into emotional laughter.
The young mentally deranged man stood up in front of the people of God chorusing and dancing, “I no be dust! I no be dust!! I no be dust!!!” The congregants became spectators of the dramatic melee. Our gallant church wardens whisked him out of the church. When the dust he raised settled, we continued the Ash Wednesday liturgical ceremony.
After the Ash Wednesday liturgical and disruptive ceremony was over, I entered into a deep reflection and research which was prompted by the mentally deranged young man’s behaviour. I asked myself, “What is dust?” The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, New Edition, defines dust as “dry powder consisting of extremely small bits of earth or sand.”
The ashes we use on Ash Wednesday are got from the combustion of the previous dry palms blessed on Palm Sunday. I was highly enraged in the morning of Monday prior to this year’s Ash Wednesday. What happened? I asked my houseboy to burn the dried submitted palms for use on Ash Wednesday. Piously, I was in the Chapel of Adoration praying. Hardly did I know that the boy burned the dry palms very close to my room while the front window was widely open.
Eventually when I entered my room, it was clouded with thick smoke and was choking. It was as if ghosts performed burnt offering inside my room. I was short of breath and my vision was blurred. Hastily, I opened all the windows including the front and rear doors. Then, I ran out angrily and confronted the houseboy for what he did. I ordered him to do the needful immediately.
The mentally deranged young man agitated that he is not dust. He acted out of his mind. Any sound person knows that human beings are made of matter and spirit. The second biblical account of human creation clearly states that God fashioned man out of clay of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, thereby man became a living being (Genesis 2:7). Every human being is therefore a dusted spirit.
The dust is otherwise called solidified body. The breath of God forms the spiritual aspect which is called the soul. Thus, every human being is made of body and soul. The body is mortal while the soul is immortal.
At death the body disintegrates into dust while the soul returns to the Creator for judgment. During resurrection the decayed body, which has turned into dust, will rise again in a reformed manner and unite with the soul once again and the two will live forever in the world beyond. What a wonderful God!
On Ash Wednesday, we are reminded that we are dust and unto dust we shall return again. In other words we are liable to death. However, death is not the end of human life. It is not annihilation but a transition. In a way, it is the end of a new beginning. The old preface of the dead says, “Life is changed but not ended.”
Death is the process of transformation from mortality to immortality. This physical world is temporal while the next world is everlasting. It is not how long we lived that matters, but how well. We must not lose sight of the three unavoidable things that await each and every living human being: death, judgment, salvation or damnation.
The ancient and wise philosopher Socrates, asserted that an unexamined life is not worth living. The period of Lent reminds us that we are pilgrims on eternal journey. Therefore, we must be conscious of our final destination which is Heaven. We should embark on this eternal journey during lent on three symbolic legs, which are Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving.
Prayer is daily communication with God. On the human aspect, we communicate with each other daily by physical contact or by technological means. It is made easier today by the use of the mobile phone. Many of us spend lots of money in buying recharge cards. Likewise, we ought to spend a lot of time in recharging our lives through prayer.
The model companion of every Christian is the Bible. Unfortunately nowadays we have consciously and unconsciously, made the mobile phone our companion both in the church and outside the church. If we spend the time and money we devote to our mobile phones in prayer, then our society will be next to heaven.
Despite the tight schedule of Jesus Christ during his earthly mission, he always finds time to withdraw from the crowd in order to pray. Some of us even make or answer phone call during prayers. It has become an addiction for so many in our society today. In the morning instead of kneeling down to pray and thank God for the gift of life, we embark on checking our phones for missed calls or messages.
During my tenure as the Cathedral Administrator of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral Awka in Anambra State, I installed attention board at the entrances into the church which reads, “Attention please! You cannot serve two masters at a time. Therefore, switch of your phone.”
The second Lenten leg is fasting. Fasting is not only the foregoing or reduction of food and drinks. The most important aspect is the elimination of the vices inherent in our lives. Hence, fasting without repentance is questionable. Fasting surely helps prayer to be more effective. When we mortify the body, the soul jubilates. In other words, sin weighs down the soul and corrupts the body.
In one of the Synoptic Gospels, a certain man ran to Jesus Christ and asked, “Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life” (Mark 10:17). The Lord reminded him of the Commandments of God, which the inquisitive man said that he has been faithful to them right from childhood. Additionally, Jesus asked him to go and sell his possessions and give the money to the poor and then come and follow him.
The man’s face failed and he went away filled with sadness. Jesus stated, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:23). In clarification, it is not enough to keep God’s commandment as a requisite of entering into the Kingdom of God. Charity must accompany it.
Therefore, Almsgiving is essential not only during Lent but always. What denied the rich man from entering into the Kingdom of God (Luke 16:19 – 31) was not because of his wealth, rather he failed to help the poor Lazarus who represents the needy. Charity, they say, covers a multitude of sins. I wish you and me fruitful Lenten season!
