People can’t usually tell my religion by looking at me. I don’t wear a hijab, the Muslim head scarf or a wig like certain Jewish women. But, I identify with these women and feel self-conscious discomfort on the one day a year I wear a big sign on my forehead that says “I’m Catholic.”
I was startled to see a woman on the subway with a big black mark in the center of her forehead. I thought Ash Wednesday was next week. Just yesterday I was thinking to myself: “I think I’ll give up alcohol for Lent since I registered for that Pilates class.” But, I thought it started next week, and bam– Ash Wednesday is today!
In Midtown there were lots of people with ashes on their foreheads. I was in Rockefeller Center. St. Patricks Cathedral is across the street.
I overheard a young woman calling someone on her cell phone, “I’m just calling you to remind you to get your ashes.”
And that is how it is done–in a New York minute.
Usually a church service is produced around the event of the distribution of the ashes (ashes to ashes and dust to dust–just in case you forgot) though not necessarily a mass.
Overhearing a comment on the efficiency of the operation I took note of the time I got into the line that stretched down the block from the entrance to the cathedral. 1:33pm. At 1:43 I entered the church and by 1:46 I was done.
There were ushers passing out programs and guiding us into line. There were 3 priests in my aisle. They looked young though, maybe seminarians or grown men in alter boy costumes. (You wouldn’t think this was the religion I grew up with, I keep running into these situations that are so foreign to me.) They were taking shifts and rotating from the different stations, there was a container of wipes so they could clean the ashes off their fingers when they were relived. They seemed to rotate around the cathedral like lifeguards changing chairs at the city pool.
I tried to take in the silence, or the canned music or the gregorian chant or whatever it was that filled the space. Then my cell phone rang. Before I left the building I stepped into the tiny gift shop and bought some books on Easter and Lent for My Kid.
I was thrilled to find contained therein the same recipe for bunny salad made of pear halves on a lettuce leaf, decorated with almond halves, raisins, red hots and cottage cheese that I had proudly prepared for my family at Easter when I was in 3rd grade.
And so the calendar of the church marks the passing of the years and the changing of the seasons.