Remember, O Man

Remember, O Man thou art dust and
unto dust thou shalt return

from the Liturgy for Ash Wednesday

Thinking about our mortality, of how fleeting our lives truly are is not something most of us prefer to dwell on.

This tendency we have to avoid thinking about the inevitability of our own death does not serve us well.

On Ash Wednesday, we are invited to take a look at this truth, to wrap our minds around it, as the saying goes.

Our lives have little meaning if we try to make sense of them outside their proper, natural context. That is, while pretending that our deaths are not the consummation of our lives; the final chapter in our lives’ stories.

You don’t need to know exactly how that last chapter of your story will read.

Just know that the story’s entire meaning, its true significance is blunted, perhaps even unknowable if we drift through the autumns of our lives clinging to the fantasy that God’s hand will not soon take up that pen and begin to write.

.

Brother Ben

© 2020 The Fellowship of St Francis, Inc.