Lessons of Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday. In the Catholic ritual the ashes of the palms on Palm Sunday are sprinkled on the heads of the penitents.

In the Passion of Christ, today also teaches us a very good lesson, that popularity is ephemeral, just passing, fleeting, short-lived, and transitory. That the public is fickle.

The public may adore you now. It may hate you tomorrow. That's the lesson many leaders have not yet learned from Jesus Christ.

Four days ago, people of Jerusalem joyously welcomed Christ astride a donkey, waving palms, chanting "Glory to God in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosana in the highest."

Just four days after, he was put under trial before the Roman Governor of Juda Pontius Pilate. Pilate did not find Christ guilty but fearful of the crowd, shouting "Crucify him! Crucify him!" he ordered Christ's execution.

One lesson, weak leaders are afraid of the crowd. The fickle crowd.

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This is the same crowd that shouted "Hossana" four days ago. And a weak Pilate washed his hands to please a crowd. What happened to Pilate?

One legend has it that he faced all the misfortunes in life, that during Caligula's reign, his body was thrown to the River Tiber but evil spirits so disturbed the waters that it was taken to a mountain lake, now called Mt. Pilatus.

I remember all these because in 1987 while touring Europe, in Switzerland we climbed Mt. Pilatus in Lucerne and Monte Bre in Lugano.

Mountain climbing there is easy for tourists because you just sit in a mountain train, called "funiculare" that brings you to the peak.

Anyway, there is also a legend that Pilate became a penitent, a martyr whose feast day is June 25.

This is one of the lessons of Lent, penitence. Penance.

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Now, the lesson on the fickle public which must be a timely reminder to all politicians. Don't allow the heady wine of an adoring crowd get into your head. A few days after they may cry for your blood.

U.S. President Richard Nixon is a good example. He won the U.S. presidency in 1968 from Hubert Humphrey, succeeded in getting the U.S. out of Vietnam and normalizing diplomatic relations with China. He beat Humphrey in a narrow margin. But when he ran for re-election in 1972, he beat George McGovern with the biggest margin in U.S. election history.

Too confident of his popularity, he ordered a break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate.

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The incessant, vicious media attacks led Nixon to resign, fearing he would be impeached. But he got the nod of his vice-president Gerald Ford to pardon him which Ford did upon assumption of office.

Ford was a Senator appointed to the vice-presidency after Nixon's re-elected vice-president Spiro Agnew resigned when charged for income tax evasion. He opted not to contest the charge.

Nixon and Agnew were known for having challenged and fought the press tooth and nail, believing they could get away with it. They did not.

They were themselves vulnerable. Agnew's role in the Nixon administration was to take up the vicious press that kept on attacking Nixon's war on Vietnam. Nixon was the one who ended it but the press did not give him that honor.

After he lost the presidency to John F. Kennedy in 1960, Nixon ran for California's governorship. He lost again. In his press conference, he told the press. "You will not have a Nixon to kick anymore." But in 1968 he ran for president and beat Humphrey.

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I said, it's Holy Week and I would devote my writing to Lenten issues.

If I took up Nixon and Agnew, it's because Nixon who died in 1994 or 20 years after he resigned, became a penitent, admitting the wrong decisions he made.

And so with Agnew who died two years later in 1996. He did not publicly admit what were known as his faults. But, to himself, according to one article after his death, in later life, he realized the errors he committed.

Before he left the White House on August 9, 1974, Nixon talked to his staff. This is what has been recorded of what he said:

"Always give your best. Never get discouraged, never be petty, always remember others may hate you. Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And you destroy yourself."

These are among the lessons of Lent, penitence and forgiveness.

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See you on Monday after Easter.*

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