What sinners want

Chant Cafe explains why everyone wants ashes:

And so with ashes we cover three senses: the touching of our foreheads, the hearing of a reminder of our own mortality, and the seeing of the ashen cross on our foreheads. And here we have a case against the ideology that wants to purge Catholicism of its distinctive physical markings and the ceremony that makes them part of our lives. Catholics come even in the absence of a mandate in order to experience them. And we do so because we adore the perceivable marks of our faith. We adore the ritual. We adore those features of the faith that underscore features of the physical world that make our very lives sacramentals. Our faith is not just abstract. It is real.