When we receive ashes, we hear one of two things: remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return, or repent and believe in the Gospel.

The first comes from the Old Testament. These are the words that God spoke to Adam and Eve before they were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Here it is in its full context: cursed be the dirt of the ground because of you. In toil you shall eat its yield all the days of your life. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the dirt of the ground from which you were taken. For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.

These words serve as a warning that outside of God’s presence, life will be a constant struggle amid the drudgery of work, bound to focusing only on the things of this world, never rising above the dirt of the ground. God speaks these words not in anger, but with sorrow, because they reflect the fact that humanity is not becoming what God has hoped for us to be.

The other, repent and believe in the Gospel, comes from the New Testament, and they are a call to conversion, to orient our lives to the power of Jesus. While it is important to remember that we are dust, and to reflect honestly on our past, it is even more important to remember that we are made for eternity.

To believe in the Gospel is to live with the conviction that you and I can live more fully in the present. The Gospel puts an end to being stuck in the past or being anxious about the future. Depression and anxiety immobilize us. The Gospel frees us and moves us forward. If the Kingdom of God is here, then I can live in confidence within God’s presence.

This freedom comes from Jesus. Paul gives us one of his most important theological statements: God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

This is a profound statement. John the Baptist calls Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The sin of the world is our human tendency to be dominated by the fear of not being enough, which leads to pride, envy, and division as we become rivals with God and each other. Paul is saying that Jesus enters into this experience and gives us the power to transform it from within, into righteousness.

Righteousness can also mean justice. If we are created by God to be free, and sin entraps us in fear, then what is just, righteous, is to be given freedom of heart. At Mass, before the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest says, let us give thanks to the Lord our God, and you respond: it is right and just. Gratitude comes from knowing we are free to worship without fear, and a heart oriented toward worship is a heart being moved forward, toward God, toward eternity. That is what we receive when we have faith in Jesus: he closes the gap between heaven and earth (fear), so that we can move from sin to righteousness, and finally live as God created us to live.

Paul prays for the Corinthians that they will not receive the grace of God in vain. We receive God’s grace in Baptism. We receive God’s grace every time we pray. We receive God’s grace every time we receive the sacraments. But if that grace is not leading us forward toward having better relationships, then we are receiving that grace in vain.

This changes our relationship with Lent. In the tradition of the Church, the disciplines of Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Many misunderstand these disciplines as a season of self-punishment, focusing on where I am stuck, depriving myself of things I enjoy, punishing my body, hoping to overcome my sins, at least for the next forty days.

But properly understood, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are not about me, it is about our relationships. Prayer and fasting deepen our relationship with God and help us listen more closely to his voice. Prayer and almsgiving deepen our solidarity with others, especially the poor, and help us turn our attention away from ourselves and toward the needs of others. Sometimes the poor can be those lacking attention and love, forgiveness and encouragement. Sometimes the poor are living under our very roof.

So, think about what you can do to have more meaningful relationships this Lent. How can you deepen your prayer life? How can you add to the quality of life at home? What patterns of behavior and healthy habits will help you grow in ways that continue beyond these forty days?

The Gospel today challenges us to make sure that whatever we do is genuine, and that our appearance coincides with reality, otherwise we will be wasting God’s grace during this season. God transforms and frees the heart, but I must honestly will for his grace to transform my life.

I have been sharing the Rules of St. Ignatius in the bulletin, and how they can help us identify the movements of our heart as we seek to do God’s will. This weekend, I wrote about the Ignatian Daily Examen. I invite you to do this with me every day for the next four weeks. You can pick it up in the bulletin this weekend, or simply search online for the Jesuit Examen prayer.

It is a spiritual exercise that takes ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the day. One stops to look back at the day, to see where the Lord has been and how I have responded. I examine myself to see where I failed to be aware of God’s presence, and where I was faithful or unfaithful to the Lord in my words, actions, and choices. Then I make a resolve to look toward the future, asking God for the grace to be more whole, more authentic, more free the next day.

There are five simple steps to this prayer:

1. Become aware of God’s presence.
2. Review the day with gratitude.
3. Pay attention to your emotions.
4. Choose one moment of the day and pray from it.
5. Look toward tomorrow with hope.

Then you conclude with an Our Father and the Ignatian prayer of surrender:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will.

All I have and call my own, you have given to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours. Do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace.
That is enough for me.

There is a lot of dirt being thrown around in the world right now: continual discord over immigration enforcement and violence, the horrific findings in the Epstein files that make it difficult to trust anyone in power anymore, you can’t even have a Super Bowl halftime show without it becoming a culture war.   In this world divided by conflict, today we are reminded that we are not merely dirt. May this Lenten season be for us a time to rise and embrace more fully the grace of God’s love given to us through Christ. Your life is not in vain, so yes, let us repent and believe in the Gospel, believe in the good news that today you and I have received what we need to be fully alive