Can the dust sing praise of God? 

By Rev. Thomas Coughlin

A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me to scatter the ashes of his deceased mother over a seaside cliff in California, which I did on a beautiful sunny afternoon. When I saw the gray and tired ashes blowing away in the gentle breeze over the ocean, I wondered to myself where the deceased person is right now…with God or what?

As I watched the ashes dancing away in the wind, a line from Psalm 30 reminded me: “Can the dust praise you or proclaim your faithfulness?” I then wondered if this small pile of ashes falling through my fingers and gliding like speckles over the cliff into the crashing sea below has any current value and the answer came as not. When we turn into dust or ashes after our death, we lose our own worth, for dead bodies are totally useless, except for gross anatomy classes at medical schools. Truthfully speaking, every corpse everywhere is worthless, sad to say. We are destined to become dust and the cycle of our life comes to its completeness.

Lenten season, especially on Ash Wednesday, we hear these words from Genesis 3: “For you are dust and unto dust you shall return.” It is a stark and painful reminder that we are nothing but a walking bag of water and minerals. Biology tells us that we are made up of 76 percent of water and 24 percent of minerals and chemicals. That’s all, nothing more. Some of us have more water to carry around in our bodies and that’s why many Phat Farms become rich.

We may ask ourselves: then, why were we created in the first place? What’s so good about us being created as a walking bag of water mixed and baked with minerals and chemicals and then find ourselves destined for the grave? No one knows the true answer except God. We need to go to God and present God with this question: “Why are we created?” Through the Holy Scriptures, God responds to our inquiry with these words: “Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves….”

It seems that the answer is hidden somewhere in these words. However, we press to ask: Why make us in the first place, only to be condemned to suffer and die later? It does not make any sense.

There is a tombstone in a cemetery near Colgate, New York, which bore this epitaph: “The soul is an enigma; God is the solution.” There are times when we do not understand why we are and have our being. We may not understand where we came from and where we may be going. Our life is like an enigma…a mystery. There are no clear-cut answers that explain exactly who or why we are here on earth. It seems that the answers to riddles of life and death are found in God alone.

However, when we search the Holy Scriptures, we learn that we are created for eternal happiness with God. God created us because He wants to share His love and goodness with us. We are created to participate in the joyful existence of God and we respond to God’s kindness by our constant praising and thanksgiving.

This brings up another important question for us to ponder. Who gives God praise or proclaims His faithfulness? The Psalm 30 reminds us that dust cannot give praise to God. Only the living people like you and I can give praise to God and to proclaim His faithfulness here and now while we live, not tomorrow or after our death when we may be transported to heaven, wearing white robes, wings and golden halos and praising God on the harps as commonly caricatured in the cartoons.

We do not praise, love or thank God for the sake of praising, loving or thanking God. We praise, love and thank God because we have a relationship with God. We pray and talk with God because we have a covenant of relationship with God, established by our baptism.

If we do not have a meaningful relationship with God, we become useless like this heap of dust blowing in the wind over the Pacific Ocean. Psalm 30 gently reminds us again, “Can the dust praise you or proclaim your faithfulness?” Is your spiritual life like a heap of dust, ready to be blown away into nothingness? What about your faith? Is it as dusty as a pile of ashes or is it burning brightly as a beautiful tapered candle in the dark?

A relationship with God or someone you love and cherish is what constitutes your worthiness and value as a person. If you do not have a meaningful relationship with anyone, then there is no life in you. Life occurs whenever there is a meaningful relationship between yourself and someone, not a something.

God seeks a relationship with you, not with the dust that will become of you someday. When God created us in His image, He intended for us to enter into a meaningful relationship with Him. He remembers that we are dust and in spite of our dusty nature, He will raise us above the dunghill and be seated among the nobles and angels. By God’s grace of creating us in His image, God will transform us into living people as prophesied by Prophet Ezekiel: “Dry bones, hear the word of Yahweh. ‘ I am now going to make the breath enter you, and you will live. I shall put sinews on you, I shall make flesh grow on you, I shall cover you with skin and give you breath, and you will live; and you will know that I am God.’”

When many people die and remain dust forever in their graves or elaborate tombs, it is because they do not have relationship with God. They do not go to Mass on Sundays or Holy Days or to spend some time at praying in chapel and/or Holy Hour to praise and give God thanks. They prefer to spend their time pursing other activities that have no concern with God and His goodness. Alas, when they hear this, “…and unto dust you shall return,” the words will hurt and sting deeply because this is precisely what will happen to them.

During the Lenten season, we need to deepen our relationship with God so that we can truly give thanks and praise to God with our life. Let us take more time and efforts to seek God through our prayers and contemplation in the presence of God. Once we do this, we will experience the glory of Christ’s resurrection at the moment of our dying and rising with Christ on Easter Sunday. If not, then you will be as good as these gray ashes flying over the Pacific Ocean, only to be swallowed by churning gray sea and be no more.