For practical purposes, the Kohen who cleans the excess ash from the Altar changes his garments. He removes his regular vestments and changes into older, more worn priestly garments. A number of lessons can be derived from this concept. The most notable is that one should appreciate the significance of dressing properly for an occasion. When one greets the king he should prepare himself, donning garments which befit royalty. Hence, when one greets Shabbos, or enters a sancturary, such as a Shul, he should dress in clothes that are appropriate to the sanctity of the place and the holiness of the day. All too often, many of us find nothing unseemly about entering a Shul dressed in casual clothing or directly after participating in a demanding physical sport. We might even try to “add” something to our attire l’chvod Shabbos, to honor Shabbos. If we would only accord the same reverence to devarim she’b’kedushah, areas of holiness, as we do to secular functions, our whole attitude towards Yiddishkeit might be different.
Horav Moshe m’Kubrin explains this pasuk homiletically. He applies this pasuk to the day when all of us confront our mortality, the yom ha’missa, day of death. “He shall remove his garments”–a person should always bear in mind the day that he will remove his garments, and “don other garments,” he will be dressed in tachrichim, shrouds, the garments in which deceased are dressed. “And he shall remove the ash to the outside”–his soiled body, his earthly container, will be removed and taken to its eternal resting place, the cemetery, “to a pure place”–while his neshamah, soul, will go before Hashem to give a din v’cheshbon, a complete accounting of its sojourn on this world. While we are not suggesting that one should be obsessed with the concept of death, confronting reality might enhance our spiritual well-being. How unfortunate it is that when we give consideration to our mortality, it tends to be late in the closing scenes of the performance we call “life.”
