No Ashes For Me

Roman Holiday is a 1953 movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.  Sixty-one years later and during the week of Ash Wednesday I had a trip to Rome, but it wasn't a holiday - just a business trip.  However, it wasn't all business because my first trip to Rome had to include a few important stops such as the Vatican and St. John Lateran, the latter being commissioned by Constantine the Great (307-337) and the first building of public worship erected in Rome and in the entire Christian world.  And what a church it is!

Thinking St. John Lateran would be a very meaningful place to receive my ashes, I went early in the morning to a Mass said in Italian.  Where's Monsignor Tosti when you need him!? 

But, no ashes.  I later learned that in Rome wet ashes are not applied to the forehead.  Dry ashes are sometimes sprinkled on the top of the head.  Doesn't seem quite the same.

Scheduled to give a presentation at my meeting later that day, I thought my ashes would have revealed me as a Catholic showing that I repent and believe the Gospel and that I'm dust and to dust I will return.  It was not to be.  I guess the lesson was "when in Rome, do as the Romans do."  Perhaps that meant: "Forget about a cross on your forehead.  Show you're a Catholic by what you do, and not how you look."

Deacon David Pierce