Why am I here?

Homily

Ash Wednesday

2 March 2022

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Why am I here?

This sounds like an existential question.  I could dive deep with it I guess.  Yet I'm not going to.

I'm going practical today!  Ash Wednesday is not a day for abstraction.  It's literally a day to get dirty.  It's a day to get real, one of brutal honesty.  

So when asking why am I here, I'm asking about my story.  How is it possible that my story passing through this little chapel on the KU campus.  How are these my people?  Why do I allow a stranger to throw dirty on my forehead, and call me a fake, and remind me I'm gonna die?

That's what I mean by the question - why am I here?

Ash Wednesday is a trip.  It's the strangest of days.  It's the best marketing strategy the Church has ever come up with.  Nothing else works at KU except inviting people to be insulted and allow a stranger to rub dirt on them.  Yet I love every second of it.  So do you.

Why am I here?  Actually I'm gonna retract the question.  I don't really care why.  I could make a billion dollars if I could read the soul of each one of you who comes to Ash Wednesday, but I don't want the money. 

What I care about is that I am here.  What I care about is that you are here.  That's all that matters, and it is enough.  Being for each other and sharing this moment, considering our faith stories together, that's all I care about.  What I love about today is that I don't have to have life figured out to belong.  Today I don't have to pretend to be better than I am.  Today all the price tags and labels I put on others don't matter.

Today we're just together.  My story matters.  These are my people.  I want to live differently, but I don't know if I can or will.  Yet I haven't quit.  Of all the places I could be, I am here.   

That is enough.