Ash Wednesday: The First Day of Lent

 Jesus showed himself alive

   after his passion (Acts 1:3)

“Passion” comes from a cluster of Greek words around pathos from which we get our word “pathos;” from which we get our own cluster of words like “sympathize” or “empathize” or “compassion.” It is most often translated “suffering,” or “affliction.” It speaks of the afflictions of the soul—of the whole person. On Ash Wednesday, the sign of the cross is smeared with ashes on our forehead. The ashes symbolize our mortality as in “dust to dust and ashes to ashes” (Gn 18:27). It’s a time to owe up to our own finitude and to marvel how Jesus participated fully in our pathos “humbling himself unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). 

During Lent, we seek to identify with Christ’s sufferings and afflictions, his griefs and sorrows (Is 53), his pathos. It saves us from the heresy of Docetism which claimed that Jesus only “seemed to suffer,” or “pretended to suffer.” It means for us that to be like Jesus is to enter into our own pathos. We don’t have to pretend. We suffer.