As the end approached, and Father Vianney realized it, he did a very monk-like thing in the mode of Vianney. He got out of bed, got into his habit, wandered around the monastery a bit for the last time, returned to his room, lay prostrate on the floor, face down, modo monastico [in the monastic way], that is, his hands flat and his forehead lying upon them, and so awaited the Lord --Who came and got him. On the floor -- symbol of the earth from which he came: mater, mother, matter. Dust, ashes. Primitive people opted to be born literally on the earth, and to die, literally, on the earth. Fr. Vianney was witness, in the vivid style he loved, to the human condition. Some ashes smeared on your forehead will deliver you the same message this morning.

Ash Wednesday, among other things, is an admission and an acceptance of the human condition. If "dust to dust" was not spoken of the soul, it is still in the dynamics of human existence, something we deal with for the reason that life will end in ashes.

We come face to face with the consequences in our endeavors to know God. Nowhere else do our limits make themselves so prominent.

Already in early centuries the matter of our knowing God fascinated brilliant minds and led to developments that set patterns come down to us.

In speaking of God, we move in three fields: affirmation, negation, expansion.

We note a good in our existence. We affirm it of God. Then we deny all that limits the affirmed good. And finally, expand it infinitely to apply it to God.

We note goodness. We think of God as good and apply it to Him. Before doing so, we strip goodness of its human limitations. And then apply it to God in a most eminent way. And so we come to some knowledge of God. By analogy. What other way is there? "If you, evil as you are, know how to give good things to your children, how much more your heavenly Father!" Jesus taught us analogy.

Our talk of God, then, is neither univocal, for human good and divine good are not the same. Nor is our talk equivocal, that is, almost meaningless for being applied so disparately. There is enough in common with human good and divine good to see something that is in both.

It is by analogy we know God. He is like this, He is like that. And the basis on which this speaking rests is that it is God who has revealed Himself in all creation. "The world is charged with the glory of God" (Hopkins). We can read Him in creation. By analogy. By causation. We use metaphor: God is a rock. A firm foundation. We use relationship: God is Redeemer. My Savior. We use negation: God is without limit. He has no end. No beginning. He has no height, no depth. He is infinite.

Yet in all analogy, in all use of metaphor, relationship, negation, we know our limits, for we cannot ascribe the merely human to God with any adequacy. All analogy breaks down.

We reveal this unknowability of God in giving Him many names. How many the images, the likenesses of God! If we knew God we would give Him a name, but we do not and cannot, and so He has many names, each revealing a little, the total of them far from reality.

Vatican I put it so: "Divine mysteries of their very nature so excel the created intellect that even when they have been given in revelation and accepted in faith, that very faith still keeps them veiled in a sort of obscurity as long as we are exiled from the Lord in this mortal life."

"If you understood," so Saint Augustine, "then this is not God. If you were able to understand, then you understand something else instead of God. If you were able to understand even partially, then you have deceived yourself with your own thoughts."

This God so inadequately known through human knowledge, concepts, intellectualizing, is known truly only through love. For God is love. And is known in love. We know God not in the mind, in words and concepts, but in the heart, in love.

Our human condition places us before a God who is inconceivable, immortal, invisible, infinite, and so beyond our grasp as to lead us to despair. "In loving we already possess God as known better than we know our fellow human whom we love. Much better, in fact, because God is nearer, more present, more certain." (St. Augustine)

"I am who am," the "One who is," was God's name as given to Moses in the burning bush. Here ultimate being is called God:  the first, the original, the only real being, for all other being is derived. And all that does be, can be only in God's sharing the capacity to be. Yet when we say He is "Being," we have not come near the truth for the reason that we cannot.

In the end we fall to our knees in awe before ineffable mystery. And we give love to Love for we cannot help but do so. And know His love in our very being.

We note the wind, the gentleness of God in a light breeze from off the sea. The power of God in a mighty wind. The wisdom of God in the clouds that bring rain, the wind-borne seeds that support birds, prosper growth, supply trees. We stand in the rain that can by turn be dew, be fog and mist and frost, be snow and hail and ice and rainbow. And wonder about the God who enjoys them so. We walk the beach to watch the surf and recall quiet days when it is wincing glass, storm days when tons of water come crashing on the coast. There is no end of God manifest above us, around us, beneath us, within. God beyond us utterly. Utterly.

Ashes indeed that reveal the glory of God that fills the world.  Amen.