Ashes Mark the Frontier

               Ash Wednesday a couple of years ago, at our Jesuit office in Chicago, we had a morning mass and distributed ashes. That afternoon I met a young man new to our office, a recent Northwestern graduate, and he told me right out that he felt bad because he had not been to mass that day. I was impressed. Later, after dinner, I took a walk through the neighborhood. It was February, but the day was warm with an early hint of spring. And I kept spotting foreheads marked with an ashy cross. A young woman chatted on her phone – she had her ashes. A young man engrossed in his iPod – his cross bobbed with the music. Three young women rounded a corner by a bar laughing – ashes in a bar? A man clipped along in shorts and T-shirt – his sweaty ashes clearly said penance. A woman knotted her face and clutched the wheel of her SUV as she sped through a red light – no crusader ever wore a more threatening cross than her ashes! Throughout the neighborhood, which draws many young adults, ash-marked faces abounded.

               At the Jesuits’ general congregation in 2008, Pope Benedict told the Jesuits to go to the frontiers. Superior General Adolfo Nicolás has repeated the challenge. By implication, Jesuit schools and other ministries too are called to be out there at the borderlands, the edge. Those young faces I saw along Halsted Street on Ash Wednesday – we had traced a cross on them in baptism 20-some years earlier – were they showing that we had done our job? Or were they a healthy starting point to do much more? Were they showing us where the frontiers lie, the borderlands of new mission, new ideas, new commitment?

               We know stories of decline. Bishops have spent a lot of energy in facing the need to close or to consolidate parishes. Every school closing evokes lament. Every church closed feels like a collective death. Andrew Greeley once explained that this is because the Catholic Church is powerfully, intentionally incarnational. It invests in bricks and doorframes, blackboards and statues, candles that flicker and bells that ring. We know our religion is more than these, but when lights burn out and the bells go silent, we feel loss. We have tied our memories and our imaginations to places where we have been and celebrated life’s passages. No, the gates of hell will ultimately not prevail, but the solid rock foundation feels the erosive power of turbulent tides.

               A number of studies have attested to this erosion. Christian Smith’s Soul Searching affirmed religious desires of teenagers, but these desires often do not translate into religious practice. Earlier studies (Peter Steinfels’s A People Adrift; Tom Beaudoin’s Virtual Faith; Robert Ludwig’s Reconstructing Catholicism) offered various analyses, but each said that we have a lot of work to do.

               And a lot of great work is happening. I am part of a national seminar on Jesuit higher education, where I have heard stories of strong programs being founded to study and promote Catholic identity, Catholic imagination, Catholic thought. I have learned of the hundreds of faculty and staff at Catholic universities and colleges dedicated to making a difference. I have spoken with eager students grateful for the difference that these schools make in their lives. They love their schools! This is equally true of Catholic high schools and parishes and spiritual centers and media.

               On Friday after my Ash Wednesday walk, I stopped in the local Walgreen’s. Before me in the checkout line was a woman who, with her husband, did a lot of great work with local Jesuit schools. She talked about a young man, Peter, an alumnus of two Jesuit schools, who had gotten involved in that work. Peter is one of dozens of Jesuit alums attracted by the chance to put their education to work. They have a great education. And they want it to make a difference.

               Here is the challenge. I do not know if Peter was one of those I saw walking by on Ash Wednesday with their faith written on their faces. It does not matter. I do not know if he was in church last Sunday. That does matter, but it is not all that matters. What matters is that here is a connection. Here is a beginning of a network of faith. The young women and men looking for something beyond residual faith, beyond virtual religion, beyond noise and clutter and hype – they are calling out to the church for companionship on their journey. They may be our farthest frontier, our most challenging borderland.

               Ash Wednesday’s marked foreheads are far more than personal piety. They let us recognize our fellow strugglers and know that we can call out for help along the way. They are a brief reminder of an enduring reality, that we can go to the frontiers together and from our ashes build a society that is more just and more faithful.

Originally published in America on Feb 16, 2015

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