The story of the phoenix, a large bird that dies consumed by fire, was compared to the resurrection of Christ as early as Pope Clement 1, in one of the earliest Christian adaptations of this mythical creature that is reduced to ashes – ashes which become the birthplace of a new phoenix.
In some traditions, a magnificent creature is burnt down every 500 years. Then, from its bones and ashes, a new bird rises again, as magnificent as before. The comparison to Jesus rising from the dead was natural for early Christians surrounded by these mythical figures.
The ritual of the ashes, celebrated a few days ago at the start of Lent, is in itself a primal, image of this sort: the sort that speaks to us of a profound truth, unadorned with the sugar coating of religious trappings. Ashes are placed on our heads, reminding us of our finitude, our limits, and the finality of death.
But ashes mean much more. In Scripture, the people of Nineweh who hear God’s message from Jonah, Esther, Judith, the Maccabbees and others, sprinkle themselves with, or sit in ashes as a sign of mourning and contrition. As in many other traditions, the biblical reference to lying in ashes symbolises a humbling, an acknowledgement of stepping out of normal life to enter inside, in the inner parts of the soul. In North American First Nations, a tribe member would sit aside of the communal fire, and the clan would know that this person is undergoing some deep personal process.
Nowadays we don’t have patience for grief, sorrow, guilt, humiliation, sadness or even sin, to speak to us. We rush to diagnose as depression, not only that which is clinically clear, but also many genuine journeys of the soul which need time in ashes in order to start welling forth meaning and newness.
Scripture images like the phoenix honour these types of transformative journeys: they show us that avoiding this pain is impossible if we really are to grow. Ashes tell a story: for new life to happen, the old has to burn. Completely.
But ashes are not only an outward sign of an intrapersonal journey. By acknowledging we are ‘carrying ashes’, we also reflect on what this means for us as a community. The truth is we are also living this moment as a Church in ashes, consumed by the too oft repeated tragedy of allegations of sexual abuse of minors by clergy. A Church sitting in the ashes of shame, destroyed trust, betrayed faith.
My home Church in Gozo lives this in a particularly raw way this Lent: a church called away from its trappings and laces and gilded ministrations, and invited, maybe even constrained, to sit in the ashes of humbling, humility and silence.
The Church claims this for itself, as it sits among the cinders, “grieving what we’ve done wrong, renouncing the dance, refraining from the banquet, refusing to do business as usual, waiting while some silent growth and healing takes place within and among us. Simply being still, so that the ashes can do their work in us.”(Ron Ronheiser, The Ashes of Lent, 1992).
It is from this unlikely place that a new Easter is forged.
Fr Frankie Cini, member, Missionary Society of St Paul