Deacon Bill Ditewig is one of the Contributors in our latest book of homilies: Sick, And You Care For Me, available at: http://clearfaithpublishing.com/shop/. Bill asked for a way to post his homily for Ash Wednesday, which appears in our book….and so here it is. Enjoy!

1. ASH WEDNESDAY
Deacon WilliamT. Ditewig, Ph.D.
In the verses leading up to today’s first reading, the prophet Joel paints a picture of
complete devastation. Beginning with recounting a plague of locusts which has blighted the
landscape, destroyed fields and crops, caused fires and destruction, he describes a world in
which “joy has withered away from among all people.” Stop and consider the impact of this
tragedy for a moment.
Some years ago my family and I were living on the island of Guam in the Western Pacific
Ocean where I was stationed while in the Navy. In that part of the world typhoons were an
annual commonplace occurrence. Sometimes these massive storms would be close enough to
cause some wind and rain damage, but rarely did they hit our small island directly. That all
changed with the coming of a Super-typhoon named ‘Pamela.’
In those days, a storm was classified a typhoon when its winds exceeded 75 miles per
hour. If those winds doubled, the storm was reclassified as a super-typhoon. With winds over
225 miles per hour, Super-typhoon ‘Pamela’ hit the tiny island of Guam directly for nearly three
days.
The damage to the island was devastating. I have been told that it took more than
twelve years for birds to return to the island. The storm had picked up walls of sand from the
ocean and the beaches, and scoured the landscape of vegetation. Seventy-five percent of the
structures on the island had their roofs torn off, and most windows were blown out. The
human toll was blessedly small: one man suffered a fatal heart attack during the storm.
The aftermath was perhaps even worse than the storm itself. Most areas of the island
were without power for weeks; supplies to make repairs had to be flown in from thousands of
miles away. The daytime temperatures were in the nineties, and the humidity was over ninety
percent as well. Life was generally miserable.
I mentioned that the windows had been blown out. Most nights, families would gather
by candlelight, trying to keep children occupied and restore a sense that things would be OK.
Sitting around the candle, with plywood or plastic sheeting covering the holes that had once
been windows, we would hear a noise approaching. At first we thought it was some kind of
vehicle, making a noise not unlike a street sweeper. But then, as the noise grew, we realized
that it was something else entirely. They were swarms of insects, our own plague of locusts.
Since our window barricades were not airtight, the house would soon have dozens of these
creatures “passing through” as their swarm searched for food. Sometimes we would have
several of such swarms each night, and this lasted for weeks. The birds were gone, but the
insects were not.
I thought about all of this while pondering our reading from Joel today. His description
of the devastation around him is powerful and poignant. In the midst of such devastation,

2. whether it is caused by natural disasters or by human invasion, cruelty, and violence, we turn
inward because all that is outside of us is destroyed. Listen again to the voice of the Lord: “Yet
even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and
mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God.”
A people with nothing soon realize that what matters most lies within, what our Jewish
ancestors constantly referred to as “the heart.” In Jewish writing, “the heart” includes what we
would call our conscience, our innermost being, where we “are alone with God.” What God is
constantly reminding us is that he wants a real and true relationship with us. God’s focus is not
simply on the external aspects of religious practice, but on the interior life. External religious
practice, without an interior conversion of heart to God, is a lie. After a plague of locusts,
violence, devastation, and with the loss of everything we think we know and have, when we
have truly “hit bottom” in our lives, we turn to that which matters the most: our innermost
heart and our relationship with God.
We hear the same message from Christ in today’s Gospel. Christ reminds us strongly
that it is our inner conversion of heart which God seeks. I have always loved the passage that
says we are to wash our faces, and to take every effort to not show to others that we are
fasting – all on a day when we get ashes smeared on our foreheads! It has become popular to
observe this practice by many groups of Christians, and not just we Catholics anymore. It’s not
simply all the people who will go to work or school today with ashes proudly displayed. You see
the ashen Cross displayed on Facebook pages, on internet sites, blogs and on Twitter. It has
become a public badge of religiosity. In other words, exactly what Jesus tells us NOT to do!
So, what does this all mean to us today?
First, with this celebration, we begin the sacred season of Lent. Our songs and prayers
will remind us often about the significance of these “forty days.” It can be funny sometimes to
listen to people trying to calculate those forty days! “Do we count the Sundays?” “Do we
count the days between Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday of Lent”? On and on, we in the
West tend to think so literally about things that we miss the real point. Think of all the times in
the Old Testament and the New Testament where we read about the number forty.
In Hebrew numbers, every number has a symbolic meaning, and “forty” is the number of
human testing and preparation for a future mission taken on for God. So, for example, the
rains came down for forty days and nights during the Great Flood; what happens afterward?
God forms a new Covenant with Noah. We see the people wandering in the desert for forty
years before they enter the Promised Land to begin their new life of freedom. In the New
Testament, Jesus – following his Baptism – goes into the desert for forty days to be tempted by
the Devil before returning and beginning his new public life and ministry. That’s what Lent is
for us: a time of preparation and testing leading to our renewed Covenant, our new mission in
the Risen Christ at Easter. Today is the first step on that journey.

3. As we prepare to receive the ashes today, may we keep in mind their true significance.
Remember that in every life we experience times of our own devastating “plague of locusts,”
which can turn us away from God and to the brink of despair itself. We can believe that there is
nothing left, that all is ashes and ruin. That is our starting point, and it turns our hearts to God.
After receiving the ashes, and after you have returned your whole heart over to God, follow
Christ’s command and “wash your face” and “do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.” It’s not
the ashes that will save us, but hearts given over to God.