In the early ages of the Church, those whose sins were such as to require (in the severer judgment of those days) a public penance, received the ashes on this day from the bishop, and were then, after some other ceremonies, expelled from the Church, and not allowed to assist at Mass till Holy Thursday. {43} As they were being driven out, the words. __Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris__--"Remember, man, that thou art dust, and into dust thou shalt return"--which were repeated to each one of us as we received the ashes this morning, were said to them. Their exclusion from the Church, often during a much longer time than the few weeks of Lent, was by no means the only penance to which many of them were subjected, besides those which they voluntarily undertook; but it is enough to mention so much, that we may understand what are the feelings which we, who are to-day in the place of these public penitents, should have. Receiving the ashes was for them a sign of the most profound humiliation and repentance. They were in disgrace, separated from the rest of the faithful as unworthy to partake with them in the sacred mysteries; and they expressed by their submission a firm purpose to amend their lives, and repair the scandal they had given. Now it is to us no disgrace to receive the ashes, but even the contrary; and we are not, perhaps, understood as expressing sorrow for our sins by the act, but humiliation and penance are really meant by it, and it is in this spirit that the Church wishes us to perform it. {44} This meaning is also contained in the very ashes themselves. For what can more completely express humiliation than ashes, which are the mere remains of their former substance, without beauty, strength, or any of its qualities? And what can better represent repentance than the fine dust of which they are composed? For this reducing to dust or powder is the real meaning of contrition: the contrite heart is that which is not only broken, but even ground to dust with sorrow. The ashes, also, as we are reminded in receiving them, represent the dust of death to which we must sooner or later come, and in which all the distinctions upon which we pride ourselves so much now will be confounded, nothing being left of us in this world after a short time but a few handfuls of dust, and our souls having gone to another, where their claims to consideration will have been judged according to a very different standard from that which prevails in this life. The thought of death, then, which they suggest, ought to fill us with humiliation on account of the vanity of our worldly distinctions, and with repentance now while we have time, because after death repentance will be impossible.