Lent in Flames

And all shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well / When the tongues of flame are in-folded / Into the crowned knot of fire / And the fire and the rose are one. – T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

“Lent” is a strange word among the Catholic words we have for the Pre-Easter Penitential Season. Unlike the Romance languages that usually refer to the forty day length of the season, Lent is an Old English word which refers to the lengthening of the solar day, and hence the approaching of the spring. It’s always important to remember that our faith is intimately bound to the natural world and its rhythms. Easter is the most important example of this, and the Church made a purposeful decision early in her history to celebrate the Feast of Feasts, that of the Resurrection, on the First Sunday after the First Full Moon of Spring. Lent is a march toward the Glorious Paschal Vigil, our awaiting of the Day that will know no end.

Yet today, we begin with the sign of ashes. Ashes are not the sign of ordinary death and corruption. They are the sign of violent destruction. Heat has consumed flammable material, it has passed through it, consumed it, changed it chemically. What I find interesting about this sign is that we mark ourselves with a sign of death, and with a sign of death caused by fire. The beginning of this season reaches out, like a navigator with a telescope to a pitch-black sky, to a distant horizon. What does it see? It sees the Pentecostal Fire. The ashes of this Wednesday may mark us with mortality, it is true. But they also remind us that the old man dies, in order that a new man may step out of the flames. The season we are entering into, yes, should humble us by teaching us that we will die. At the same time, it inspires us by the teaching that while the outward man dies, the inward man in Christ is renewed daily.

The Scriptures remind us that “our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29), a verse which can cause as much fear as confusion. Many of the prophetic experiences of God are precisely that of a cleansing or purifying fire, that which burns away impurities. If there is ash in a place, it means that the process of burning has already occurred. In a sense, to impose ashes on ourselves is to say, “Look! The purification has already occurred! Spare us!” It is almost an anticipatory gesture, as if to say either the offending piece of us has been excised, or that we are offering its remains as a sort of down payment. Either way, you only really speak of ash in terms of organic matter, something that once lived, and now is dead.

In forest management, controlled fire is a necessary tool. Knowing when and where to remove dead plants, where to create fire gaps, how to cut down vines so that healthy trees can survive, all these must seem at the time counterproductive to the longevity of the forest ecosystem, and to the individual trees themselves. But imagine if we were those plants, and we could willfully put our limbs, our branches, in fire, and burn away those diseased parts of ourselves. Although it may sound a bit silly, what if we could present those ashes to God, and say, “even these, I give to you?” Ash Wednesday reminds us that true sacrifice is not something that can be merely exterior to ourselves. It must be something that lives.

Recently I was speaking in my research on Greek Mythology to a scholar about the myth of Prometheus, who famously brought down fire from heaven to men. The myth recounts how Prometheus was punished for this act because supposedly men were not meant to harness the power of fire. Yet, the scholar reminded me of something crucial that is often overlooked: the myth is not solely about the power of fire. Prometheus, in bringing fire, also brought down something which gave men the ability to offer sacrifice in a new way, by burnt offering. Now, people did not have to cut, and tear, and butcher their sacrifices after they killed and offered them. They could now save the preferred meat for themselves, and offer the undesirable parts to the gods. This was viewed as a great impiety. Something similar can be seen in the Levitical Code, where the Holocaust was the greatest of sacrifice, where the unblemished lamb was offered entirely to God. Something that is to be made a sacrifice has to be combustible. It has to be, for lack of a better term, ‘ash-worthy’.

The idols of the pagan nations, made of stone, brick, gold, silver, and other precious metals, could surely break, and some could melt or burn with a hot enough temperature. But none of them could be said to burn as a sacrifice. And none could be said to bleed, unless by some prodigy. As we commence this Holy Lent, we take stock of those pieces of us which are fit to burn with Pentecostal Fire, a fire which, ultimately, does not destroy, but which makes bloom. This is the heart of the mysticism of T.S. Eliot’s poem “Little Gidding”: in the “incandescent terror” of the Holy Spirit’s fire, the fire may consume what is evil in us, but ultimately, it does not leave ashes, but the sweet smelling rose of divine life. That is the end goal of our Lenten observance: that the fire and the rose may be made one.