Adventures in Church: Lent Ashes

The priest recommended a sexy movie, The Substance, for its lesson on beauty, ashes, and dust.

Improving Catholic Jesus, nicer and whiter

Vibhuti is valuable. It must be. People will go to great lengths to get it, even if it's just a smudge or cross over the third eye. How does one turn common ash into a sacred object of veneration? Bless it.

It was a rainy Ash Wednesday in the City of Lost Angels. But we went on an adventure anyway. (No one walks in LA, and during the rain, no one remembers how to drive). The rain ruined it the big open house event at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center (MD, "Mother of Suffering" Catholic monastery situated next to burnt out Altadena high atop the idyllic town of Sierra Madre, Los Angeles).

The male gaze and absurd beauty standards

MD changed its whole schedule: No mass at 8:00 am or 6:00 pm as promised, and the "open house" (the first time the popular retreat center nestled in the green foothills after the Eaton Fire, which is right next door and partly burned the place, making it susceptible to mudslides and flooding. The volunteers did not have much information, even on the current condition of the pope. One would think they would be on top of it, but the pope seems not nearly as important as when the pope was John Paul.

I'm so pretty, and I'm getting ready for church.

The day was nothing, no tour, but one could walk down a hall to visit the "Stations of the Cross" by looking at very dark pictures of the great Roman Crucifixion of a troublemaker called "Christ."

He suffered for his sins against the state, but having no sins his suffering has been transferred to cover the Passionists who populate the place, Catholics in specific, and everyone in general. That means us, confirmed "sinners." And you better feel bad about it or else.

Abstain from MEAT EATING for Lent or life or at least on Fridays, like Jesus wants (Christspiracy)

LA is a paradise from the air (Echo Park Lake)

The center has such a nice main building full of meditation rooms with their own showers. It's almost haunted in its kind of sterile monasticism with lots of Carmelite brown and old-style hotel. One is reminded of Self Realization Fellowship's Mother Center on top of Mt. Washington in neighboring Mt. Washington, overlooking the LA skyline. Now that's a place to visit, all syncretic Hindu-Christian, where Paramhansa Yogananda slept. One can visit his room with its tiny bed once a year on his birthday.

But this place, a kind multiroom mansion is dreary with devotion, austere penitence (tapas), and a priest from India who knows nothing about Jesus' time in India or all of the scholarship behind that century-old discovery.

• See Nicolas Notovitch, Holger Kersten, Swami Abedananda, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the BBC, and others: Unknown years of Jesus

There's a written record of where Jesus was?

Holy cow. It has a nice gift shop and lots of things to sell. There were ashes for the asking, but very little else. It used to be that to get a communion wafer and wine (gluten cracker and grape juice) from a communal cup with saliva wiped off by a handkerchief, one had to have gone to confession or gotten right with the Priest/Lord/Church Official, or Holy Ghosts.

But not for this token? Anyone could go up and be smudged (not in the good way using Indigenous sage or Salvia apiana, but rather here using the burnt offerings of palms that were prayed over).

Two priests, one from India the other from the Philippines, did not inspire us -- noncommittal, inoffensive, diffident, and reticent with little to no knowledge of anything about Jesus in India or anything else that is not Chruch-approved and Vatican-sanctioned. That's the way to stay out of trouble, one could suppose. But how is it that a priest of this religion, so emphasizing the Stations of the Cross, doesn't seem to know about the face of the lord (God's son or devaputra) appearing on a cloth used to wipe his bleeding facade during his ordeal or "passion"? That cloth should be at least as famous as the Shroud of Turin and Jesus' tunic. There's a whole station about it, and in the middle of this month the holy relic goes on tour through Southern California from wherever it's kept the rest of the time (under lock and key in a temperature-controlled vault somewhere in Europe.

Jesus Christ lived in India?

Who had ever heard of such a thing? Jesus' face on another cloth and no one has anything to say? If it's coming on tour in the neighboring cities, but the Indian priest didn't know? He did know of a mysterious relic in his hometown in India. There a wax figure of Jesus under glass grows a beard not made of hair but of some fibrous substance. Another miracle yet this very same priest had never heard of the Christian saint's blood in a vile that has remained liquid for centuries. It was almost a shame to tell him about it, or anything else, because he didn't believe it. Did the Church say so? seemed to be his whole position on everything. What kind of kissing up is that, following a religion and never questioning it? The smart kind, the kind that keeps one in good graces with the higher ups, the "let's not upset things and get me in any kind of trouble or scandal"? What is he up to that he would so fear any potentially unflattering attention or appearance of impropriety in believing or admitting to knowing about anything unorthodox?

Let's get out of this place, exquisite grounds without a sense of holiness

The Church knew where I had been and deleted it.

From there we left, driving in the rain to find a better mass, something of a more popular nature. Every Catholic church in the country celebrates it. They are standardized and not allowed to deviate.

We found a giant ash mass at St. Andrew's Catholic Church (Pasadena, California), the one with the clock tower visible from the 134 Freeway, where it splits from the 210. It has some of the most beautiful Roman Italian (and life-like brown skinned mural art) and alabaster white statuary with giant imported marble columns and a big picture of the "God" right up front looking down, with impossibly high ceilings, which may be 100 or more feet up.

St. Andrew's Church campanile

There was a big crowd of penitents, half of them Anglos, half of them Latinos, with a sprinkling of Asians, gathering even as it drizzled and threatened to rain. There was a Spanish service going on in the St. Andrew Catholic School hall with a purple draped cross, the cloth representing the figure usually found on it. The Spanish version seemed more spirited, as accords with Chicano gatherings, full of heart and warmth.

• The priest said an amazing thing we'd never heard before. If it were a trope, they'd all be saying it and wed've heard it a million times. The sign of the cross has two motions. The first spells "I" top to bottom, and the second, which sweeps from side to side, cancels it out. It's self-abnegation for God (a tip of the hat to Buddhism's selflessness).

Sign of the cross in six steps: I and Not I.

It was odd sitting there watching the giant church fill up. Most Catholics only go to church or "mass" three times a year -- Easter, Ash Wednesday, and Xmas. It seems like enough. The words of the priest were odd to hear: words full of guilt, sin, pleading for forgiveness, as if it were a given that everyone had and was going to sin.

Apparently, we are all sinners, and we have to sin, and there's no way not to sin, so be sure to feel guilty about it, and come to church for indulgences to stay on His good side in case you die midweek. Just keep coming, and that'll keep you in His good graces? (Who thoughtlessly accepts such empty promises, or is it that having nothing else, because they were never allowed to investigate anything, there is no choice? Just accept it all or reject it all, and since we can't reject it all, we have no choice but to accept it all?)

The Substance

You are not your body. - What?! But I...

The multilingual priest conducting the mass gave a good sermon when he deviated from the standard text and told a story about watching the Oscars and being surprised to see The Substance getting attention. To hear this Father tell it, he saw the film or at least part of it. In one scene a woman (Demi Moore), fearing she's getting to look too old and is losing the interest of her husband, goes in for a beauty treatment. It will make her look 20 years younger with porcelain skin (think filter but in real life). She does, but it has a side effect of inflammation and looking worse before it gets better. So she takes a walk and dives into a Catholic church to sit in the back and just reflect as she waits for her new face. It happens to be Ash Wednesday, and the preacher is yelling, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," not singing a song by Bowie but quoting the Bible. She's shocked to realize that after all her efforts to beautify her body, it remains ashes and dust (though better preserved looking now and less rotty).

THE SUBSTANCE | official trailer | in theaters & on MUBI now

This religion seems to have been better in the past. Or was it always like this? How is the spell not broken, the stench of hypocrisy of child molesting priests not enough to wake people up that the Vatican runs too tight a ship, here to take in taxes (rebranding them as tithes) for this arm of the Holy Roman Empire?

The rules for Lent

LENTEN REGULATIONS: The Holy Season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. This year it falls on March 5th. During Lent, all Catholics engage in various penitential practices. Of those, the most important and obligatory are the regulations on fasting and penitence.

Do it for me, Virgin Mary, Mother of God (Veiled)

Abstinence from meat is to be observed by all Catholics 14 years old and older on Ash Wednesday and on all Fridays of Lent. Abstinence means refraining from eating all meats including beef, poultry, pork, etc. [slaughtered cows, birds, pigs, and so on]. Seafood [dead fish] is permitted.

Fasting is to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday by all Catholics who are 18 years of age but not yet 60. Those who are bound by this may take only one full meal. [That's quite a fast.] Two smaller meals (that do not equal one full meal) are permitted. [Will it be enough, will people starve?]

The special Paschal fast and abstinence are obligatory [mandatory] for Good Friday and encouraged for Holy Saturday. By the threefold discipline of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer the Church keeps Lent from Ash Wednesday until the evening of Holy Thursday.

All the faithful and the catechumens should undertake serious practice of these three traditions. Failure to observe any penitential days at all or a substantial number of such days must be considered serious.

Abortion? What's so special about a tiny egg?

• Taken verbatim from the St. Andrew Church Bulletin, Old Pasadena, March 2, 2025

Mater Dolorosa Retreat Center is excited to announce that it is fully reopening and invites the public to a special homecoming event on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2025, from 2:00–5:00 PM. No reservations needed. Come get ashes, pray the Stations of the Cross, and take a guided tour of the grounds [cancelled due to rain but moved indoors for a self-guided review of some pictures]. Development Director Melanie Goodyear at MGoodyear@MaterDolorosa.org and (626) 355-7188 x 103.

• Team Recovering Catholics (accompanied by a real diehard old timey Catholic to ask questions), Wisdom Quarterly, March 5, 2025