Holly's Story

This Ash Wednesday (2026), we celebrated six Masses. For the first time, we offered a noon Mass, and the turnout was wonderful — a good sign for the future. But it's the 5 o'clock Mass I keep returning to.

I went up to the church about twenty minutes early, mostly to check on our supply of Little Black Books. We were out — a note for next year. But while I was there, I noticed something happening. People kept coming. And coming. Before long, the church was standing room only, and I found myself in the gathering space directing people to overflow seating in the social hall. Then the social hall filled too.

I found Fr. Dan and asked if there was anything I could do to help. He looked at me with wide eyes and said, yes. You can help distribute ashes.

My introvertedness answered before I could. No, I can't do that.

He showed me how simple it was — Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return — and then he left the sacristy to check on other things, and I was alone with my thoughts and all those people filing in around me.

I'm not worthy to do something so important.

That's what I thought. And I meant it. This wasn't about not knowing the words or being nervous in front of a crowd. It was something deeper — a sense that this moment, this ancient gesture, deserved someone better than me.

And then a calm came over me. I can't explain it any other way. I looked up, and Fr. Dan was walking toward me with two ash bowls in his hands. I nodded yes, and we walked into the social hall together.

What happened next is hard to put into words, but I'll try.

I looked out at the people waiting, and I saw every age. Babies. Children. Young families. Middle-aged faces. The elderly. All of them there, on a Wednesday evening, to be marked with ashes and reminded of the oldest truth we share: we are dust, and to dust we shall return. I tried to be fully present with each person — not just saying the words, but meaning them, feeling the weight of them together. We are dust. All of us. The baby and the grandparent, the stranger and the neighbor. In that moment, there was no hierarchy, no distance. Just our common humanity, and the God who made us from the earth and calls us back.

I didn't recognize most of the faces. I don't know if it was because I was so focused on those individual moments of connection, or because there were simply so many new faces there. Either way, it didn't matter. We were one.

Fr. Dan said afterward that the turnout gives us, as Catholic Christians, great hope. I think he's right. But what I carried home was something more personal — a humbling, quiet gratitude. Gratitude for the people who placed ashes on my forehead in years past. Gratitude for everyone who showed up that night, many of them for reasons I'll never know. And gratitude for that moment in the sacristy when I almost said no, and something nudged me toward yes.

I am not worthy. But I showed up anyway. And that, I think, might be the whole story of faith.