BY ROGER WATSON

As penitents receive the ashes from a Catholic priest today on Ash Wednesday, the priest says, ‘Remember, man, you are dust and to dust you will return.’ These days, at least for children and the faint-hearted, the priest may use alternative forms, attenuated so as not to remind people of their ultimate fate.

I have no idea what those forms are, but it is probably along the lines of ‘Have a nice day!’ as the Roman Catholic Church goes increasingly woke in an effort not to frighten off the few attendees it has left.

I have received the ashes in some strange places. This week, God willing, I will receive them in Bahrain. When serving in the First Gulf War, I received them in the Saudi desert. A literal desert but also one devoid of Christian churches or any outward signs of Christianity. To the Christian, a spiritual desert. We were able only to do this thanks to our remarkable padre, Captain Jim Duddy*, who refused to remove the crosses from his lapels or to compromise on the Roman Catholic liturgy.

We met daily for Mass in the ‘Morale Tent’ where he had even managed to procure communion wine and insisted we take Communion ‘under both kinds’, i.e. both the wafer and the wine. The wine, albeit Sanguis Christi, loses none of its alcoholic content during transubstantiation and was generously served. There was a particular poignancy in observing religious practices in a war zone. We were not in great danger although the occasional SCUD missile got closer than was strictly necessary.

But the most memorable Ash Wednesday I observed was in Manila, capital of the Philippines. I was working at the prestigious Santo Thomas University which is a Catholic university. I asked about receiving the ashes and this was met with surprise and then great enthusiasm. They seemed surprised I was a Roman Catholic but were clearly delighted. There was a service at lunchtime.

I am a ‘sneak in the back and keep out of sight’ kind of Catholic, preferring smaller churches and shorter ceremonies with a minimum of fuss. That was not to be.

As I was taken to the church surrounded by a troupe of Filipino nursing colleagues, all women, I was swerved away from the main door of the Church to a smaller door leading to a long corridor with a door at the end. The door was opened for me, and I stepped out into an enormous church of cathedral-like proportions. To my absolute horror, I was placed right at the front.

Near the altar, a very senior clergyman and a row of younger priests and altar servers were waiting…for me.

I was the guest of honour.

My colleagues all disappeared into the packed congregation, and I was left sitting at the front on my own. When it came to the distribution of the ashes I politely waited for others to go and receive them, but the senior priest coughed a few times and looked in my direction. Clearly I was to lead the other penitents to the altar. Which brings me to the ashes.

The ashes are made by burning the palms that are distributed on the previous year’s Palm Sunday and sprinkled with some Holy Water. In England the priest takes a small pinch of dry ashes between his fingers and sprinkles them on the foreheads of the penitents, reciting the words referred to above. You leave the church with a tiny smudge on your forehead which soon wears off.

In Manila, they are a tad more demonstrative about their Catholic faith. The ashes were prepared in a mortar on the altar realtime and several times a large volume of Holy Water was poured into the mix. I could sense the concoction thickening into a bonfire ash paste and, sure enough, a large thick black cross was duly painted on my forehead. I was not really aware of the scale of the thing until I saw my fellow penitents turn round as they left the altar.

To the credit of my colleagues, they walked about for the rest of the day, as did the students I was teaching, with their crosses on their foreheads. Much to my shame, I soon rubbed mine off claiming, somewhat Britishly, that it was ‘not really our custom’.

Roger Watson is a Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.

^{*I searched for news of our Roman Catholic padre on Google only to find that he had been charged with sexual offences, later dismissed in court, in 2003. Remember, man, you are dust…}