Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday the day when Catholics choose this day to place ashes of repentance ashes on the foreheads of participants to either the words "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" or the dictum "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." It marks the beginning of Lent as we prepare for Jesus to die and then return to heaven on Easter. It can be complicated since most people don’t go to church today anymore to get ashes placed on their foreheads but they do practice celebrating Fat Tuesday. 

Americans like to party. So there is Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, that are events of the Carnival celebration, beginning on or after the Christian feasts of the Epiphany (Three Kings Day) and culminating on the day before Ash Wednesday (known as Shrove Tuesday). It is a historic tradition that came from the Cayman Islands and from Italy. In New Orleans the celebrations are a billion dollar tourist industry of celebrating and partying before Lent where people fast for 40 days or give up doing or eating something they really like in order to repent for their sins, many of those sins occur on Mardi Gras that seems to make the so called commitment kind of false. So people sin because they will repent later? I think people pay more attention to sinning than repenting. 

The biggest sinners in the hypocrisy of organized religious beliefs are the Catholic Clergy. I’m supposed to receive Communion or Ashes from the hands of a priest who I am not sure where his hands have been? Priests have a Doctorate in Divinity and are the ones who should know the Bible the best. However it has been revealed that even the Cardinal, one close to being Pope is a sexual abuser who hid his secret sex life, who even other’s in the clergy hid his warped sick sex life and abused children throughout his life and now he is very old. Where is the repentance from our highest of religious leaders if even they do not repent for their sins and come forward? 

So people will go to New Orleans and party. That tradition is if a woman flashed her breasts she will get beads thrown at her to wear. A stupid sick tradition along with the drinking and hanging out with people you don’t even know that is practiced a lot. The bigger picture is to know where religion should be in our hearts. So we walk out of church and go to Evangelists who equally sin. They are very wealthy and demand money all the time. They suffer from extreme narcissism. Their self-promotion is greater than what they preach. 

So we still believe in God especially when there is no scientific explanation for things that happen to our health. We don’t have to believe in any Church leader but we can still have faith. The Bible says in Ephesians 4:31-32 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, ... a lesson Trump could use to learn too. 

In the Bible God speaks directly to Noah, Moses, Jobe and Solomenon and no one else to join the prophets. Even the Pope must realize this. Unless God returns to earth again with all his miracles it is narcissistic to think anyone could replace his shoes. So put faith in yourself and your Bible and if you don’t get those ashes on your forehead today then at least say a prayer to yourself to give you the courage to be a good person and know the difference between bad and good daily.