Dies Cinerum

One of the small pleasures of attending such an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic university as Notre Dame is that people don't look at you funny for walking around with a smudge on your forehead today. (Of course, Lutherans and other saner Protestants also distribute ashes, but an ostensibly Lutheran school like Augustana is basically secular.)

It is a remarkable thing, this wearing of ashes. No other day of the year do we so boldly proclaim our identity as followers of that Jesus fellow. And how could we? Indeed, how can we, even for one day, presume to represent the moral teachings of Christ? We fail miserably, and are (rightly) judged as hypocrites. And yet God suffers this (or, at least, is content to let it continue). I suppose it is right that we are permitted to persist in our striving towards sanctity.