Journey of Dust by Jill Carattini
Please note the following writing was taken from the A Slice of Infinity section from the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries page.
I
walked through the neatly laid stones, each row like another
line in a massive book. My eyes strained to take in all of the
information—name, age, rank, country—and perhaps also death itself, the
fragility of life, the harsh reality of war. In that field of graves, a war
memorial for men lost as prisoners of war, slaves laboring to construct the
Burma-Siam railway, I felt as the psalmist: “laid low in the dust.” Or like Job
sitting among the dust and ashes of a great tragedy. Then one stone stopped my
wandering and said what I could not. On an epitaph in the middle of the
cemetery was written: “There shall be in that great earth, a richer dust
concealed.”(1)
It is helpful, I think, to be reminded that we
are dust. It seems crucial to take this reminder with us as we move through
life—through successes, disappointments, surprises, distractions, tragedy. For
Christians, it is also a truth to help us the vast and terrible events of Holy
Week. The season of Lent, the forty days in which the church prepares to
encounter the events of Easter, thankfully begins with the ashes of Ash
Wednesday. On this day, foreheads are marked with a bold and ashen cross of
dust, recalling both our history and our future, invoking repentance, inciting
stares. Marked with the Cross, we are Christ’s own: pilgrims on a journey that
proclaims death and resurrection all at once. The journey through Lent into the
light and darkness of Holy Week is for those made in dust who will return to
dust, those willing to trace the breath that began all of life to the place
where Christ breathed his last. It is a journey that expends everything within
us.
There
is a Latin word that was once used to denote the provisions necessary for a
person going on a long journey—the clothes, food, and money the traveler would
need along the way. Viaticum was a word often
used by Roman magistrates. It was the payment or goods given to those who were
sent into the provinces to exercise an office or perform a service. The
viaticum was vital provision for an uncertain journey. Fittingly, the early
church employed this image to speak of the Eucharist when it was administered
to a dying person. The viaticum, the bread of one’s last Communion, was seen as
sustenance for Christians on their way from this world into another. Sometime
later, the word was used not only to describe a last Communion, but as the
Sacrament of Communion for all people. It is as if to say: our communion with
Christ within world is provision for the way home. The viaticum is God’s answer
to Jacob’s vow, “If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey
I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return
safely to my father’s house, then the LORD will be my God.”(2) It is precisely
what Christ offered when he said, “Take and eat. This is my body.” The journey
from dust to dust and back to the Father’s house would be far too great without
it.
The world of humanity is flattened by the
realities of death and sorrow. From the invitation to consume Christ’s body and
blood in the Last Supper to the desolation of that body on the Cross, we are
undone by events that began before us and will continue long we are gone. We are,
in the words of Isaiah or the sentiments of the psalmist, like grass that
withers, flowers that blow away like dust. But so we are, in this great earth,
a richer dust concealed. Walking in cemeteries we realize this; following
Christ we can proclaim it. Walking through Lent as dust and ashes bids us to
see our need for God’s unchanging provision. God offers us the Cross for the
journey, the communion of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, and the life
everlasting.
(1) This is a line from a poem of Rupert Brookes entitled “1914.”
(2) Genesis 28:20-22.
(1) This is a line from a poem of Rupert Brookes entitled “1914.”
(2) Genesis 28:20-22.
Jill Carattini is managing
editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in
Atlanta, Georgia.
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