A lovely homily was given by His Eminence Frank Cardinal Leo on Wednesday in Toronto. 

Francis "Frank" Leo (born June 30, 1971) is a Canadian Catholic prelate who has served as Archbishop of Toronto since March 2023. He was Auxiliary Bishop of Montreal from September 2022 until his appointment to Toronto. Since 2007, he has been a member of the Priestly Fraternities of Saint Dominic. His teachings are direct and well spoken. The Ash Wednesday service was given at St. Michael's Cathedral Basilica.

St. Michael's Cathedral Basilica is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, Canada, and one of the oldest churches in Toronto. It is located at 65 Bond Street in Toronto's Garden District. St. Michael's was designed by William Thomas, designer of eight other churches in the city, and was primarily financed by Irish immigrants who resided in the area. The cathedral has a capacity of 1600. John Cochrane and Brothers undertook the work on the stone and stucco ornamentation of the interior.

Many Christians attend special Ash Wednesday church services at which churchgoers receive ash on their foreheads or the top of their heads, as the wearing of ashes was a sign of repentance in biblical times. Ash Wednesday derives its name from this practice, in which the placement of ashes is accompanied by the words, "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" or the dictum "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The ashes are prepared by burning palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebrations.

This one quote on Ash Wednesday is like a poem that is pointing at the important concept of impermanence:

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." 

The great poet Kabir urged us to constantly remember death, and the impermanence of everything. He calls the body “ghat” – “an urn or clay pot.” Given that Kabir himself was a weaver, metaphors of stuff made with hands are braided into his verses. He was aware viscerally of the fragility of things, including ourselves.  

The Emily Dahl Foundation