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In the Western church, Ash Wednesday is the first day
of Lent and the seventh Wednesday before
Easter. Its name comes from
the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of worshipers to
symbolize death and sorrow for sin. In the Orthodox church, Lent begins
on a Monday rather than on Ash Wednesday.
Ash Wednesday marks the onset of the Lent, the 40-day
period of fasting and abstinence. It is also known as the 'Day of
Ashes'. So called because on that day at church the faithful have their
foreheads marked with ashes in the shape of a cross.
The name 'Day of Ashes' comes from "Dies Cinerum" in the Roman Missal
and is found in the earliest existing copies of the Gregorian
Sacramentary. The concept originated by the Roman Catholics somewhere
in the 6th century. Though the exact origin of the day is not clear,
the custom of marking the head with ashes on this Day is said to have
originated during the papacy of Gregory the Great (590-604).
In the
Old Testament ashes were found to have used for two purposes: as
a sign of humility
and mortality; and as a sign of sorrow and repentance for sin. The
Christian connotation for ashes in the liturgy of Ash Wednesday has
also been taken from this Old Testament biblical custom.
Receiving ashes on the head as a reminder of
mortality and a sign of sorrow for sin was a practice of the
Anglo-Saxon church in the 10th century. It was made universal
throughout the Western church at the Synod of Benevento in 1091.
Originally the use of ashes to betoken penance was a matter of private
devotion. Later it became part of the official rite for reconciling
public penitents. In this context, ashes on the penitent served as a
motive for fellow Christians to pray for the returning sinner and to
feel sympathy for him. Still later, the use of ashes passed into its
present rite of beginning the penitential season of Lent on Ash
Wednesday.
There can be no doubt that the custom of distributing the ashes to all
the faithful arose from a devotional imitation of the practice observed
in the case of public penitents. But this devotional usage, the
reception of a sacramental which is full of the symbolism of penance
(cf. the cor contritum quasi cinis of the "Dies Irae") is of earlier
date than was formerly supposed. It is mentioned as of general
observance for both clerics and faithful in the Synod of Beneventum,
1091 (Mansi, XX, 739), but nearly a hundred years earlier than this the
Anglo-Saxon homilist Ælfric assumes that it applies to all classes of
men.
Putting a 'cross' mark on the forehead was in imitation of the
spiritual mark or seal that is put on a Christian in baptism. This is
when the newly born Christian is delivered from slavery to sin and the
devil, and made a slave of righteousness and Christ (Rom. 6:3-18).
This can also be held as an adoption of the way 'righteousness' are
described in the
 book of Revelation, where we come to know about the
servants of God. The reference to the sealing of the servants of God for
their protection in Revelation is an allusion to a parallel passage in
Ezekiel, where Ezekiel also sees a sealing of the servants of God for
their protection:
"And the LORD said to him [one of the four cherubim], 'Go through the
city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark [literally, "a tav"] upon the
foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that
are committed in it.' And to the others he said in my hearing, 'Pass
through the city after him, and smite; your eye shall not spare, and
you shall show no pity; slay old men outright, young men and maidens,
little children and women, but touch no one upon whom is the mark. And
begin at my sanctuary.' So they began with the elders who were before
the house." (Ezekiel 9:4-6)
Unfortunately, like most modern translations, the one quoted above (the
Revised Standard Version), which we have been quoting thus far), is not
sufficiently literal. What it actually says is to place a tav on the
foreheads of the righteous inhabitants of Jerusalem. Tav is one of the
letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and in ancient script it looked like
the Greek letter chi, which happens to be two crossed lines (like an
"x") and which happens to be the first letter in the word "Christ" in
Greek Christos). The Jewish rabbis commented on the connection between
tav and chi and this is undoubtedly the mark Revelation has in mind
when the servants of God are sealed in it.
The early Church Fathers seized on this tav-chi-cross-christos
connection and expounded it in their homilies, seeing in Ezekiel a
prophetic foreshadowing of the sealing of Christians as servants of
Christ. It is also part of the background to the Catholic practice of
making the sign of the cross, which in the early centuries (as can be
documented from the second century on) was practiced by using one's
thumb to furrow one's brow with a small sign of the cross, like
Catholics do today at the reading of the Gospel during Mass.
Definition by Catholic
Encyclopedia:
The Wednesday after
Quinquagesima
Sunday, which is the first day of the
Lenten fast.
The name dies cinerum (day of
ashes) which
it bears in the
Roman Missal is found in the earliest existing copies of the
Gregorian Sacramentary and probably dates from at least the eighth
century. On this day all the
faithful
according to ancient
custom are
exhorted to approach the
altar before
the beginning of
Mass, and there the
priest,
dipping his thumb into
ashes
previously blessed,
marks the forehead -- or in case of
clerics upon
the place of the
tonsure -- of each the
sign of the cross,
saying the words: "Remember
man that thou
art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." The ashes used in
this ceremony
are made by burning the remains of the palms
blessed on the
Palm Sunday of
the previous year. In the
blessing of
the ashes four
prayers are
used, all of them ancient. The
ashes are
sprinkled with
holy water and fumigated with
incense. The
celebrant himself, be he
bishop or
cardinal,
receives, either standing or seated, the
ashes from
some other priest,
usually the highest in dignity of those present. In earlier ages a
penitential procession
often followed the
rite of the distribution of the
ashes, but
this is not now prescribed.
There can be no
doubt that the
custom of
distributing the
ashes to all the
faithful arose
from a devotional
imitation of the practice observed in the case of public penitents. But
this devotional
usage, the reception of a
sacramental
which is full of the
symbolism of
penance (cf.
the cor contritum quasi cinis of the
"Dies Irae")
is of earlier date than was formerly supposed. It is mentioned as of
general observance for both
clerics and
faithful in
the Synod of Beneventum, 1091 (Mansi, XX, 739), but nearly a hundred
years earlier than this the Anglo-Saxon
homilist Ælfric
assumes that it applies to all classes of
men. "We
read", he says, in the books both in the
Old Law and in
the New that the
men who repented of their
sins bestrewed
themselves with
ashes and clothed their bodies with
sackcloth. Now
let us do this little at the beginning of our
Lent that we
strew ashes
upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our
sins during
the Lenten fast.
And then he enforces this recommendation by the
terrible example of a
man who
refused to go to church for the
ashes on Ash
Wednesday and who a few days after was accidentally killed in a boar
hunt (Ælfric, Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 262-266). It is
possible that the notion of
penance which
was suggested by the
rite of Ash
Wednesday was was reinforced by the figurative exclusion from the
sacred mysteries symbolized by
the hanging of the
Lenten veil before the
sanctuary. But
on this and the practice of beginning the
fast on Ash
Wednesday see
LENT.
understanding the Christian calendar
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