Sometime this week, as I went about my regular work and business, I noticed something different on the faces of the people I met. As I looked at them, they stared back at me, incredulous, wondering perhaps why I did not wear what they were wearing.

It was Wednesday and most people I met on the streets, inside the malls and in some offices had this distinctive “ash” on their foreheads. “Ah, its ash Wednesday!” I thought, the beginning of the Catholic observance of Lent—the 40-day period leading to their celebration of passion and death of Jesus Christ.

The image I saw on the foreheads of people kept me thinking about those “ashes”  for the rest of the day.

I remember when I was about five or six years old, after seeing my mother was proud to wear those ashes on her head, I went straight to our kitchen, dipped my finger in the coal stove and put my own ash mark on my forehead, not knowing what the “ash” meant – it was considered “cool” to wear it.

We can call it ashes (“abo”), dirt (“alikabok”), or clay (“putik”) – all of which come from the same element or basic component which we call “earth”. The idea is to remind people of their mortality, the need to be sorrowful because of sin, and the necessity of changing their lives through self-denial and penance...

I will not dig into the controversial aspects of this Catholic “custom” which with a little research will show its questionable origin. What I would like to emphasize here is the important focus God has placed on the biblical symbols of “ashes”, “dust” and “clay” which I find lacking in the outward display of piety among people today.

While the Catholic teaching on the matter seems to pull back man from its present reality and reminded them of their past and so-called future destination – “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” – it is NOT what God had actually intended for man from the very beginning...