See? Behind the girl on the left? A little bit of grey sweater and brown hair?
Yeah.

I knew that of the many shots the photographer shot during Mass, a version of this would make it – the little girl with the ashes peering over the pew was too good a shot – she probably took 30 pictures – during the Eucharistic Prayer, unfortunately. No flash, and no one beyond those first few pews would have noticed, though.
Source: local morning paper.
We’ll use this opportunity for a “What did you see and hear?” post.
What did you see and hear on Ash Wednesday? From around the world, around Christianity – not just Catholicism.  At school and in the office, too. 
You can see the setting – I got Katie out of school for the noon Mass, then afterwards, we headed over to St. Mary’s for their noonday soup lunch.
During Mass, the priest re-iterated one of his favored lines: that this might be your last Lent. In fact, on Sunday, he made it even more specific, saying that odds are it would be the last Lent for at least one person sitting there that morning.
Memento Mori.
It was quiet, with music (cantor and organ). Excellent skills, as usual, but frustrating hymn selection – which is something I mention only in retrospect. I don’t expect anything else, so I don’t have a problem praying with it all at the time. Which I succeeded at up until the last – that last moment when I thought I had escaped, but ’twas not to be.
“Please join in our closing hymn…..Ashes.”
No, we do not “create ourselves anew.”
Well, we do actually. We try and we try to “create ourselves anew” pretty constantly. But Lent reveals to us the opposite – it’s futile and even destructive. Empty yourself and let God create you anew. He wants to. He’ll do a better job than you would. Promise.