Ashes to Ashes

It's Lent.

Every year at Lent they read the passage where you are not supposed to show you are fasting, but wash your face and go pray in your closet where your heavenly father sees you. And every year we get a huge smudge of dirty ash front square center in the middle of our foreheads. I like the way they do it at the Vatican- they drop ashes on top of your head- because you just read the passage that says wash your face and don't look like you are fasting!

It's a good time to revisit this Papal encyclical this Lent- on No Peace without Justice and no Justice without Forgiveness by John Paul II. It was written ten years ago (hard to believe) but no less true today.


http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_20011211_xxxv-world-day-for-peace_en.html