Why am I attacking Father Ronchi’s vision? Three reasons:įirst, we need to talk about mortality in the liturgy.
But some simplistic vision of the sower running through the fields as he sings, “we plough the fields and scatter” is probably more a library-bound theologian’s vision of organic sugar plums dancing in his head. The kind of trees you burned also affects the nutrient value. I’ll admit I’m no farmer, but charred carbon from the fireplace seems hardly the fertilizer most farmers would use - especially raw - “to make the earth more fertile.” You might have to mix those ashes with other compost to keep the raw residue from leaching too much lye and salts. Ronchi goes on to call ashes “a symbol of inclusion” that remind him of “the natural rhythm of things,” like the peasant who “scattered ashes” in his springtime field “to make it more fertile.” Father Ronchi expatiates, among other things, on “the meaning of today” (all translations mine).Īccording to Father Ronchi “in a life attacked and crucified by the pandemic, one’s gaze must be turned not so much to mortification as vivification, not fixated on the ‘residue” of existence but the fullness awaiting us.” 16 highlighted an interview with a Servite theologian, Father Ermes Ronchi. One would think that, after a year when the deaths of nearly two and a half million people worldwide had some relation to COVID-19, we might start talking about mortality.
Death has a peculiar quality to focus the mind on the essentials. Pardon our sins ….” The nexus between sin and death is clear. The traditional formula for their imposition is, “Remember man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The blessing of the ashes reiterates their symbolic value, “that we are dust. Catholics began Lent with a sacramental: the imposition of ashes.
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