Ash Wednesday in the Jungle

Contrary to popular belief, Ash Wednesday is not actually a Holy Day of Obligation in the Catholic Church. That means that you’re not actually obligated to make it to mass that day. In line with popular belief, Christmas Day mass is the most attended Catholic mass in the United States; however, the second most attended mass is not Easter, but rather Ash Wednesday, which, as I just mentioned, is not actually an obligated day to attend mass. After Easter is Good Friday, also a day not obligated by the Church and whose service that day isn’t even a mass.

Now I wouldn’t go around spouting off this new knowledge. First, because I’m generally okay with people not knowing they are not obligated to attend mass on Ash Wednesday. Ignorance in this case is a means of grace. Second, because you will inevitably run into someone who thinks they have all the Catholic doctrine stored in a hard drive in their brain and proceed to tell you that you’re wrong even though you aren’t.

What I find most fascinating about these random little statistical facts is that when you look at the four most attended masses of the year, Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Easter, Good Friday, they are split evenly between celebrations of absolute joy and commemorations of sincere, profound, and unfathomable sorrow. Christmas and Easter are obvious enough, so let me focus on Ash Wednesday specifically. Then I will tell you how I spent my Ash Wednesday in the jungle.

The general public knows that Christians, particularly Catholics, follow that weird tradition called Lent in which they spend the 40 days before Easter mourning over themselves and giving up little pleasures only to take up the habit again as soon as Easter Sunday rolls around in April or late March. I’m being satirical, of course, because Lent is so much deeper than it is often associated with in contemporary culture. Indeed, Lent is a time, not of spiritual New Year’s resolutions, but of deep contemplation, reflection, and realization. That is, during the season of Lent, we look at the image of Christ Jesus hanging upon the cross where He endured immense suffering and pain. This image is the image of true love, a complete and unreserved giving of oneself for another. It is the ultimate love so powerful that it broke the chains of sin and shattered the grip death, setting mankind free from the enslavement of our own egos, impulses, and failures.

It doesn’t mean that since the Sacrifice of the Cross we have been perfect. Far from it. But it means that we no longer have to live as slaves to these things, that we are free to choose our own lives, our own actions, our own thoughts, and whether to love, for love can only exist in the delicate balance between being free to love or not to love. And that is exactly what the mystery of Lent calls us to contemplate, internalize, and then manifest in deliberate and physical action. In other words, as we look at the image of Christ on the cross, that image of perfect love, we ask ourselves, “How do I imitate this love? What stands between me and loving others as Christ has loved them? Where have I not carried my cross? Where have I let it fall to the ground?”

That is the whole point of sacrificing or “giving up” something for Lent. These little sacrifices are meager re-manifestations of the sacrifice of Christ meant to slowly purify our hearts that we may better imitate the Man who loved (and loves) us above all things in this world. Our sacrifices, yes, are meant to change our habits. But above all, these changed habits are always and in all ways meant to draw us back to the reality that we are not perfect, that our hearts are not entirely pure, and that we must forgo our own egos, impulses, and failures, that we may be free from them, that we may no longer rely on them as necessities that define who we are. In short, we must learn to be free that we may live and love authentically in all that we do, think, say, and desire. And this leads me back to why I find it so interesting that Ash Wednesday mass is the second most attended mass of the year. That is, during Lent we are meant to call to mind the coming Passion of Christ and the proceeding hope which His Resurrection promises; but Ash Wednesday, oh man. Ash Wednesday kicks off the Lenten season by having every faithful Christian “remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”

Ash Wednesday doesn’t hold back. Ash Wednesday mass, the second most attended mass in the United States, is a mass literally dedicated to reminding us how little, feeble, weak, pathetic, hopeless, destitute, forlorn, worthless, obscene, hypocritical, flawed, lame, broken, alone, and blind we are in the grand scheme of things. Indeed, it is a day that reminds us that had God not held open the mouth of Adam and breathed into Him the life- and love-giving spirit of the Creator Himself, man would be nothing but a clay statue in a garden long forgotten and destroyed by the elements of the world, a wandering beast enslaved to physical passions and pleasures. The combined nature of man, physical and spiritual, is a nature unlike any other in our universe. When we take away the spiritual nature of man, man is no more than the sum of the physical matter of which he is composed, which is worth no more than the passing dust of the earth. Thus, Ash Wednesday, with a message so harsh and so brutal, begins our time of contemplation when we renounce ourselves and take up our own crosses on our individual and collective paths towards Calvary where we enjoin ourselves to the sacrifice of Christ, when we put aside all those things that hold us captive and return to the one hope that sets us free and makes us truly man and woman: the Cross of Christ. And yet, somehow Ash Wednesday is the second most attended church service in the United States.

Mind you, Ash Wednesday isn’t meant to make us despair. It would be sinful to conclude that we are without hope. Rather, Ash Wednesday presents to us the true, harsh reality that although the story of mankind begins with such grim outlook, there is something, Someone, better coming who will uplift us, make us whole, and restore the dignity of all mankind, not because our actions or our physical bodies merit the sacrifice, but because the Lord God loves His creation beyond all comprehension. In short, the path of Lent begins in the darkness of Ash Wednesday where we imprint on our foreheads a symbol of profound humility but ends on Easter Sunday with an all-encompassing flame of love that consumes and enlightens all with an enduring hope and love. If we Catholics advertised all of this more often, I think Easter would soon move to the second position, just after Christmas.

But let me tell you about my Ash Wednesday in Andasibe. I had the week off from school, so Megan and I decided to make our way out to the jungle for an overnight trip. We hired a driver, booked some lodging, and made our way on the 5-hour drive through rural Madagascar before we arrived at Rico Lodge. Rico Lodge was the perfect place to be. Rico owns a small jungle farm along one of the rivers in Andasibe. Over time, he built several bungalows and outfitted them with bathrooms, lights, and some bedding to welcome visitors. He doesn’t charge much and there are only 3 or 4 bungalows as well as one or two shelters if you bring a tent. The “pathway” to our bungalow wasn’t maintained. Why bother? We’re in the jungle after all! We certainly got an authentic experience.

Rico set us up with a guide and we were off to the island of lemurs where we went for a short walk around those paths. After a calm late-afternoon of reading and napping on our porch that overlooked a small river at the foot of our hill, we packed up our things and met our guide at the end of the road where he took us on a night walk through the jungle. The jungle is an intimidating place on its own. But walking through the jungle at night is an experience I won’t forget.

It’s not like the forest in the United States where it is generally quiet. It’s actually quite loud. Frogs and birds make loud crying sounds. There are shrieks in the distance of some lemurs or other animals. In fact, lemur comes from a Latin root meaning something like ghost or specter because they yell rather loudly. There are no mammals other than lemurs and the only predator is a fosa which are extremely rare in this part of Madagascar. There’s not much that can harm you, really. But walking through the pitch black of the jungle, stepping over roots, pushing leaves and brush out of the way, and taking a moment to look at the frog, lizard, moth, or even lemur we found made quite the impression on me. Being Ash Wednesday, it made me feel more connected to the world than I have been in a while. Nature is wild, and so much wilder when it is dark, when it is cloaked by an obscurity that limits our senses and depletes any security or certainty we harness from our eyes. We even managed to find a rare mouse lemur, not even the size of a tennis ball, hiding in some branches. When our guide and another guide spotted him, it was like watching two small boys playing in the woods because they were so excited. When we got back, Rico and his wife made us a wonderful dinner. Their “restaurant” is just a shelter with a bar, a few tables and chairs, and a makeshift outdoor kitchen behind the bar. We really did get the authentic jungle experience.

The next morning I woke up to find some crickets on my bed, which is not unusual considering we were in the middle of the jungle. I shooed them away, washed off, got dressed, and went out to sit on our porch to say my morning prayers. I thought to myself, “Man, maybe I could do this whole jungle thing. It’s peaceful. The thunderstorm last night wasn’t too bad. The air is clear. It’s humid but I could get over it. The people here are all friendly and like us. Yeah, maybe I could.” Then I looked up and found that a spider whose thorax was about the size of 50-cent coin had made a cozy little web in our porch’s ceiling, “Yeah, probably not.”

Megan and I packed up and made our way to Rico’s “restaurant” where he made us a small breakfast of fruits, bread, and jams. He even brewed me a cup of coffee, my first real cup on the island. It was delicious, and when I told Rico this, he proceeded to show me the tree he had grown the beans from. Everything we ate at Rico’s was grown on his little jungle farm, even the chicken, akoho gasy. Rico, Megan, our driver, and I had great conversation during breakfast, and our relationship was forever solidified when I asked if they mostly get vazaha or Malagasy visitors. “Anglophones,” Rico said. “The Malagasy don’t like the jungle bungalows, so they stay at the luxury resorts. And the French would never stay here.”

Both he and the driver had a good laugh when I told them how one of our guides in Mantasoa told me that he liked Americans more than the French. “The French are too egotistical,” he told me. “They come here and look down on us. They expect us all to speak French and they never bother to learn Malagasy. They think Malagasy is the poor people language. Americans, especially like you, respect the Malagasy, even learn the language. We like it when you come. You respect our island.”

Tourism is obviously a big industry in Madagascar, especially for villages near national parks, like the village of Andasibe. Most people in rural Madagascar survive on subsistence farming with some extra if a vazaha happens to come by with some cash. When we were paying Rico that morning, he opened his account book, pointed to the page that had been last filled out, “22 April 2021,” he said shaking his head. “That was our last visitor before you.” Nearly a year ago. Mind you, Rico doesn’t make a living on tourism alone. It’s just an extra thing he does because it’s extra cash and he likes to welcome visitors and connect them with his guide buddies, a win-win for the community. But at places like Vakona Lodge, a luxury resort in Andasibe, the people who work there are betting everything on the fact that there will be visitors, otherwise they still have to survive on subsistence farming. When Megan and I went there for lunch, there were only 3 out of 30 rooms checked out.

Anyways, after breakfast, Megan and I spent 4 hours walking through the jungle with our guide where we saw all sorts of lemurs, lizards, some giant snails, plenty of insects, and some of the craziest plants I have ever seen. The jungle is almost deafening. There’s a strange paradox in the jungle in that it is incredibly loud yet, at the same time, silent. It feels like everything is happening at once, yet nothing is happening at all. You are surrounded by noises, nearby and faraway, but you see nothing but green and the occasional movement of something completely obscured by the thick foliage. If you want something to remind you that you are dust, I suggest taking a long walk through the jungle. There is not much more that can make you feel so little and defenseless than walking through a paradoxical cave of noise and silence, all encompassed by a green wall of mystery. We then had lunch and made our way back to Tana, which took 6.5 rather than 5 hours. And that was my Ash Wednesday in the jungle. Not a traditional way of going about it. But it is one that I will never forget.

Enjoy the photos of my the jungle excursion below. And as always, know that you are in my prayers each morning. All I ask is that you do the same for me.

May God be praised.