ASH WEDNESAY: A CALL TO TRUE CHANGE
Fr. Prof. Cornelius Afebu Omonokhua
According to John Cardinal Henry
Newman, “To live is to change and to have
changed often is to be perfect.” This belief is accepted by many people.
Another common slogan today is: “Be the change you want to see in others.” The clamour for change is not new. People are
generally bored with permanence and duration. Before
Socrates, “change” was one of the themes of debate for ancient philosophers.
Heraclitus was the first known philosopher to have directly raised the issue of
change. According to him, "one cannot step into the same river
twice". "The road up and the road down are one and the same". On
the contrary, the Eleatic school of thought founded by Parmenides affirmed that
change was impossible and that reality was one. The followers of Parmenides
especially, Melissus and Zeno provided more arguments to prove the impossibility
of motion that involves an infinite number of steps. Aristotle introduced the
notion of potency and act to distinguish being-in-act from being-in-potency. He
discovered the concept of potency by observing accidental changes. He observed,
for instance, that a sculptor can make a statue from a block of marble. The figure of the statue is in potency in the
block of marble. For Aristotle, motion is the technical name for change in
accident. He identified three kinds of motion: a change in quality (alteration),
a change in quantity, size (growth or diminution), and a change in place (local
motion). Aquinas proposed that for
every true motion, there must be a cause sustaining that motion. With this
position he identified the first way of proving the existence of God.[1]
The above arguments present the
fact that for everything that exists, there is an author. That whatever exists
is in motion and therefore subject to temporary permanence. In this context,
every change is bound to have content. In the motion of change, the question is
“what is the status of the present reality?” “From what to what is the reality
changing?” Another question could be; “Which is easier, to change oneself or to
change another person.” The reality in life is that many people do not think
that they need change, they often think that it is the other person that is
going the wrong way.” The truth is that the greatest warrior in the world is a
person who can conquer himself or herself by taking charge and control over his
or her temperaments. This is where the concept of change is central in human
existence.
Creation was put in place to set
in motion the principle of dynamism and progress. God exists of himself; hence
only God is constant and does not need change. Whoever thinks that he can
change the world without changing himself is claiming equality with God. It is
only God who exists by nature. Every other creature derives existence from God
who chose to create the world and all that exists. The world exists because of
God’s free choice that the world should be (Genesis 1: 1-25). In Adam, the
human race is chosen and sent on a mission to change in the context of service
to “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and conquer it. Humanity was chosen
to be master of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living
creatures on the earth” (Genesis 1: 28- 29). Jesus Christ would tell us later
that, “Any tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into
the fire” (Matthew 7: 19). But in Adam, humanity failed in the call to be
fruitful. The eating of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3) is akin to producing
sour fruits (Isaiah 5: 1-4).
Today we live in a world where some people present themselves simply as
the best and agents of change. Some people have developed a complex of not
seeing anything good in the present, they only think that, “the bird in the
bush is better than the bird at hand”, contrary to the normal adage that, “a
bird at hand is worth more than a thousand in the bush”. Because the human
person is selfish, the world has been turned to a rolling stone that gathers no
mud. To encourage self transformation, the Church celebrates Ash Wednesday to recall humanity to authentic
existence. The wearing of ashes is a response to the call to repent and believe
in the Gospel (Mark 1:15). Those who wear ashes are reminded that from dust,
they were created and to dust they would return (Genesis 3:19).
