That Strange Mark on Your Forehead

In high school, I attended Ash Wednesday Mass at 6:30 in the morning. In college, I tried to make it to the noon-fifteen at the Wren Chapel. These services, leaving a grey smudge across my face, left me self-conscious and defiant of the world that might judge me. However, aside from the occasional, "You have something on your forehead," I never experienced any sort of negative reaction.

Cue my first year at a Catholic school. I only had to turn around to eye 7th graders talking during Mass to be laughed at for the bold black cross blazoned across my forehead. Seventh grade sees my color the most of any class, which was part of it. I never thought about how ashes look on different skin tones until that group reacted, and the other students noticed all day. At the end of the day, tutors from a more upscale boys' high school came to join us, and I noticed the ashes, a proud scar. The grey blended in more with my students' skin, although most of the rubbed it off anyway.

I have become so used to people knowing what the ashes mean that it's hard for me to remember where I was in 8th grade, let alone where my students might be. On Ash Wednesday, we wear our penitence on our faces, something very different than the closed-doors confessions we are used to and scared of. Catholics come out for Ash Wednesday to get the mark of their Catholicism, but I imagine that if most of them realized the full import of the mark, they would think twice about coming. I know I don't, not fully. They are meant to say what so many people are loathe to say : I did wrong and I regret it.

Consider the mark that Cain received in Genesis. God wanted to tell people that Cain had done wrong, but that didn't mean he was cast out from the world. Our ashes, which remind us of our mortality, also place a holy mark on our foreheads. What do these contradictory signs mean together?

I'm not sure. Nor am I sure how to explain even the slightest bit what penance means to 8th graders who have very little concept of personal responsibility. So I'm struggling with this Lent a bit.