Ash Wednesday (and the MS "end stage")

[Note: if you don’t see this on Wednesday, 25th February, I’m sorry. I drafted it then but it can take me a while to get to Blogger!]

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” And, at least today, everyone else will be thinking about it. Well, that’s how it seems, anyway, having just watched EWTN’s Mass and two priests smearing ash crosses on scores of poor, penitent foreheads.

Not secularites obviously, no atheists or agnostics; not even Muslims or Jews; but for Catholics the world over, and anyone vaguely calling themselves Christian, Ash Wednesday will bring them to reflect on death…

The beginning of Lent and the Gospel tells of Christ’s leaving His disciples, to go alone into the Wilderness for forty days and forty nights. To be, physically alone, to be tested to the extreme; tempted, eventually, by the Devil, and, at last, to envision and accept His death to come. It is the time poor Jesus would begin to feel the emotional agony He will cry out from in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And which, therefore as Christians, we are called upon to share, at least empathise with, at this time of the Passion – season of Easter – which starts, liturgically, on Ash Wednesday.

‘Poor penitents’ – of which, of course, I am one, though without the literal ashen brow as I no longer get to Church (I’m sure the local Priest would have come here if I’d asked but I didn’t, he’s so busy – I expect to see him before Easter Day) – will offer up their own sacrificial suffering (their penance for sins) to unite with Christ’s sacrifice of Himself for the sake of the world.

It is what Catholics are encouraged to do at any time of suffering in their lives and why they love the term “offering it up”! It is why on a Catholic crucifix there is always a Corpus (body of Christ).

For me, as someone with progressive MS – a degenerative neurological disease – in chronic (meaning constant) pain, it (the Passion of Christ) has become a blessèd raison d’être. The entire and only meaning of my life.

And for this, I am incredibly, and humbly because I know it is a grace, grateful. It is not for no reason that the word ‘Eucharist’ is Greek for ‘thanksgiving’: body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus, Son of God, in the bread and wine of the daily Church offering.

Oh, golly gosh, I love being Roman Catholic!

Anyway, back to the reason for this piece: Ash Wednesday. I feel less alone today because I know there are others thinking about their own mortality and their future, eternal, life to come.

And because I hope they may think of all those like me and say a prayer that God gives us, or in my case, continues to give, the strength to go on. That we might show the same courage and fortitude as displayed by dear Jesus in the Wilderness and throughout His journey to, and suffering of, the Crucifixion. “Take up [your] cross and follow me.” [Lk 9:23] May we keep hearing those words.

I don’t know if it’s the same with all – what Tom (son) and I sometimes call - “long-haul illnesses”. I imagine it is, if, for any continuous period, for any reason, someone is immobile. That is, that they, like progressive MSers, will come to what is known as the “end stage”, where even your internal organs start (?) to weaken and, finally, no longer support life.

Well, it looks (even the MS Nurse agrees - but mostly I keep it to myself, I don’t see doctors [see MS blog]!) as though I’m reaching that point. And it’s a scary time. My heart goes out to anyone else going through this and my redemptive prayer (offered up) is for all of us.

My lungs are what I think will go first (as they often are, of course, with pneumonia or something similar – you can read about this and my herbal remedies/tonics for everything lung related, again, in my MS blog!). Or it could be the heart. Who knows? God knows, or will know. And that’s all that matters.

I just thought I might write about that – my end, as it were – and about how it’s going (!), here, with Jesus. And with you who I love because I know I should, if you’re actually reading!

God bless you.

Amen