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• No Damned Soul

  

  “Eloi, Eloi,  lema sabachthani?”

  A gasp pierces through the darkness. There is no Sun, anymore; he has hidden his face, in shame, and in horror. The sky is dark, the air heavy with the stench of blood mingled with sweat and wood. The Sun withdrawn, the galaxy turns upon another fixed point, a hill at the heart of Jerusalem- Golgotha, the Place of the Skull.

  Three jagged trees stand erect at the apex of this hill. Men hang upon each, affixed to the wood by colossal nails hammered through their wrists and their crossed feet.

  At the center is a Man out of place. He does not belong here, his punishment a consequence of others’ hypocrisies, hatred, betrayals, lusts, lies, cowardice, and pride. He is mangled beyond all recognition. A diadem of thorns digs into his scalp, causing blood to trail down his face. He is naked, his frugal belongings having been split amongst the soldiers that marched him to Golgotha’s peak. His back is split along his spine, flesh rent asunder from the bone by the lashings of a Roman scourge. Every breath is agonal, his position making every draw of air labored and insufficient. Breaking his knees would expedite the process, bringing a quicker death- a mercy.

  The Man would not receive mercy. He would hang.

  The crowd at his feet murmur, reveling in the hideous spectacle. “Behold,” they sneer. “this man is calling Elijah!” They are ignorant of the words he spoke, and the meaning his sentence carried. They do not know that his agony is more than physical, that his soul roils in the furnace of abandonment’s pyre- the torment of Son forsaken by Father.

  “I thirst,” the Man croaks. He knows that his work is done, that now only the closing verses of prophecy are left to be fulfilled.

  A soldier runs to fill a sponge, dipping it in a jar of sour wine. Bystanders jeer, “wait! Let us see if Elijah will come to save him!” The soldier brushes them aside, fixes the sponge to a tall reed and holds it to Man’s lips. The Man drinks, the vile flavor mixing with his bile and blood, aggravating the sores in his gums and doing nothing to stem his dehydration. The sip is enough. The work is done.

  “It is finished,” declares the Man, breaths still ragged and airless.

  His body aches with unceasing toil. His mind flitters between consciousness and the terminal void, his corporeal functions shutting down. His spirit pulls to descend into Sheol, but it cannot go; it is still tethered to the Man as he yet clings to life. He will not die until He so wills, and He still has a final word to say.

  The Man draws himself up as high as the nails allow, his head turned toward Heaven as his soul pulls towards Hell- it too being led where it does not belong, but must go to accomplish the work. Master even then over the basal elements of creation, still the Lord over all the physical world, the Christ again does the impossible. Breathless, airless, without the requisite oxygen in his lungs, and lacking the power of his voice in a parched, blood-stricken throat, yet he cries out a booming, ultimate pronouncement:

  “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit!”

  The earth is silent as the Son of God breathes His last. The earth shook, and the great temple of Jerusalem saw its veil torn in two, split from top to bottom. Many of the dead were raised, leaving their tombs to enter the high holy city, revealing themselves to multitudes.

  But upon that dreadful hill, Jesus Christ hung dead.

  His pain had been indescribable, his misery incalculable, his torment inscrutable. There were many who suffered the death Christ suffered. There were thousands crucified by the Roman Empire, thousands scourged by Roman whips, and thousands betrayed and abandoned by their friends. But there was only One who did not deserve it. There was only One who lived a perfect life, betrayed no one, spoke only truth, lusted never, hated none, and loved always.

  Of all men who ever lived, across all time and from all places, only One did not deserve to die. Only One could have refused death if He had so willed. Only One suffered a crucifixion He did not deserve, and only One was crucified because He chose to be.

  Jesus Christ died a death He did not deserve, to secure His beloved with a blessed, eternal life we do not deserve.

  On this day, a little over two-thousand years ago, the infinite, sovereign innocent, was killed by- and died for- His damnable, Hell-meriting creations. No damned soul can call this day Good.

• Ash Wednesday

  March 3, 2025

  

  
  "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return."
  

  I first attended an Ash Wednesday service two years ago. I was at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for Army basic training, and it was still the tail end of winter. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as nasty of a day as one would expect from homophonic Misery, and the service offered a convenient reprieve from the burgeoning hand of the Drill Sergeants; there would be plenty of unpleasant antics to come later, to be sure, but not during a church service.

  We had been allowed to walk there on our own, (unsupervised, to everyone’s shock), and we had initially missed the church we were supposed to be heading to. There was another, much larger, church a ways north that offered a ‘contemporary Protestant’ service every week (imagine an average low-church evangelical/non-denominational type service). This was, naturally, the church that most of us were familiar with; it, along with a Catholic service attended by a very small handful, was the only option available during the initial weeks of training. When we received a bit more freedom on Sundays to go where we pleased, just about everyone who went to church, went to the Contemporary.

  But I, being the haughty dissenter I am, did not attend the Contemporary church. I attended the Traditional (thus were how the two Protestant services were titled).

  About halfway through our training, our company received a massive influx of trainees that had originally been training with other companies outside of our particular regiment. We rapidly went from a company of 250-something trainees to about 400. Obviously, this was too much for our original Cadre to handle, and so half of us got sent over to another company that had failed to fully fill for its training cycle. Our first Sunday with this new company, one of our new Drill Sergeants got mixed up and ended up dropping us off at the wrong service: Traditional.

  Lutheran-esque is the best way for me to describe it, I think. There was a liturgy, and hymns, and Communion every week. The vast majority of my fellows that had been duped hated it.

  I loved it.

  I had never grown up in that setting; my family were all Christians, but I think I could count the amount of times I had ever been to a church service on one hand, and those instances had all been the low-church Baptist/evangelical types (save one peculiar memory of a Methodist-esque church from when I was very little). I wouldn’t say that my experiences with these churches left me disillusioned or ill-invested in the Church or Christianity as a whole- I still steadfastly claimed faith in Christ, and I had earnestly desired to be baptized before I left for training (though I didn’t quite understand what Baptism really was, save that I was supposed to do it), but I didn’t like my experience in them.

  I had a profound distaste for the Contemporary service at the base, in particular. It was one of those highly-spectacular churches, with a charismatic speaker as the Chaplain- of course, who only ever preached the shallowest sermons on Christ before returning to begging for tithes- and a massive screen that projected his every move. I saw it as a televangelist church, and all the empty spectacle left me revolted.

  But this new church was something different. It was dry and solemn, and almost entirely empty, save a few old regulars who lived on base and the poor friend I forced to come along with me every week. But it felt like home to me; reverent, authentic, and holy. So I, as I contemplated my faith more and more (long training days with very little entertainment in the many dragging wait periods left me with a lot of time to read the Bible), found myself coming back to this church week after week.

  This yearning for a traditional structure was probably what drew me to attend an Ash Wednesday service. I didn’t really know what it was, but it sounded important and I was vaguely familiar with Lent.

  So came I and about a dozen of the wisest of my companions (though whether they came for the service itself, or just for a reprieve from the Drill Sergeants’ wrath was, as usual, debatable), walking down the empty streets of a training base on a crisp March evening. After we initially missed it, our group doubled back and found the small church nestled in a back street. We had passed it a dozen times, but had hardly ever passed a second glance. There were several buses dropping off trainees from other companies around base, and a serious contingent of on-base residence, all of which were soon packed into this little church.

  I remember the awe I felt when we made our way inside; all the quiet, somber, poignancy hangs with me just as heavily now as it did then. I remember my companions were boisterously goofing off, and how deeply this upset me. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but this service- exceeded only by the high, holy, horrible memorial of Good Friday- deserved our utmost solemnity. I, being the self-righteous stick in the mud I was (am?), certainly thought a number of choice thoughts on their behavior, and gave more than a few stern looks (not, of course, that it made any difference).

  There was a sermon, and I did my best to follow along, but I recall it much less vividly than the apex of the service: the imposition of ashes. I wasn’t sure exactly what we were doing, but row by row we formed a line and approached the altar. We marched forward, and as I steadily approached, I began to make out the words. A cross was drawn on each forehead, and person by person was atomized before me, dismissed with those words assuring the cold reclamation of the earth. Soon, I had made my way to the fore, and the declaration was rendered unto me- assured to us all, and yet then bestowed unto me in fine:

  “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

  I felt the weight of it, then- my weightlessness. In a moment I was disintegrated, reduced to the same basal elements that make up us all. I was no better than anyone else there, or anywhere, at any time, ever. I was dust. We all are dust.

  Ash Wednesday opens the gateway to Lent, a season of penitence and sober self-reflection. This day is a reminder of what we are, to lead us into a reminder of who Christ is. The eternal Divine, Son of God, the Logos that spoke the world into being- descended into a being drawn up from the same dust He made. He, who numbered every grain upon the desert sand, became a man composed merely of those same composite parts. He, who was always Himself sufficient- never with need or want, for all our needs ultimately are derived from Him- became dust, entered into the wild land composed of dust, and became enhungered.

  As He, who never had cause before to hunger, chose to fast- so too we can fast. He poured out His Divine glory into the dust, so that the dust can become more than his composite parts.

  God became dust, to die as dust- to raise the dust again with Him.