I was working as a Catholic chaplain at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, and one of my first patients was a teenager, about 18 years old. He was dying of leukemia, and his body was thin and frail. But as I spoke to his family and saw the photos around his room, I realized that he had once been a strong, healthy football player for the high school team. His journey was quicker than ours, but all of us will make that same journey, from ashes to ashes, from dust to dust. Our bodies are only the fragile vessels into which God has poured the spirit of Juan or Maria or Mike or Jimmy. If I could, I would mark not only our foreheads with ashes, but also our entire face, our hands and our feet.  And I would ask you to do the same to me. But if cancer causes death to the body, sin causes death to the spirit. When the beautiful Tamar had been deceived and humiliated by her half-brother, Amnon, she put ashes on her head and tore her clothing (2 Sam. 13:19). Her grief was not for her personal sin but for the sin of the world and how that sin affected her. We begin the season of Lent with ashes because we begin with the harsh realities of life. There IS sin and brokenness in the world. There is our own sin, and the sin of others. We need a Savior to walk with us in this world of sin because it is too dreadful to do it alone. If we can begin at this place, in this state of dreadfulness, then our own small discipline of Lent will begin to have meaning, meaning that will lead us one day to the Resurrection. – – – Fr. Jim