+     ASH WEDNESDAY     +

    Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Lenten Season.

    Lent in a very special way points out that we are pilgrims.  For seven weeks we walk with Christ, in response to his invitation, "Let us go up to Jerusalem."  The penances, the fasting, and all the other aspects of Lent are the hardships of the journey.  The Church gives us the cross of ashes on Ash Wednesday to show that we have pledged ourselves to walk with Christ during Lent.

    Ashes and the Word of God: As with all material things which are used as religious symbols, the symbolism of ashes is complex.  In themselves ashes have little meaning.  The "dust" into which we shall return, taken by itself can be perceived as just a morbid reminder that once day we will die and can even become an empty superstition rather than a religious act.  But received in light of God's revealing Word, ashes can become for us a s Christians the biblical symbol they are intended to be.  It is for this reason that the Church has placed the reception of ashes within the framework of the reading of Scripture.  Ashes recall that we are mortal and subject to death.  God's Word reminds us that it is nor the death of the body, but rather the death of the soul that is feared.

    Through the Scripture readings the reception of ashes becomes for us the symbol of hearts that desire to turn to God, a god who is "gracious and merciful, rich in kindness and relenting in punishment."

What:    A cross in our foreheads

Why:    As a sign of penitence during the season of Lent, that we will make sincere efforts to cleanse our lives 
            of sin and to discipline ourselves through prayer and fasting.

Who:    Baptized individuals who have reached the age of reason and Catechumens may receive ashes.  Babies
            and young children who have not yet received the Sacrament of Penance should not be presented to
            receive ashes as ashes are intended for those who are capable of personal sin.

When:    After the prayers of intercession and for a brief period immediately after Mass.

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.

In his Lenten Sermon St. Augustine told hid hearers:

"During these days our prayer rises aloft because it is borne up by pious almsgiving and austere fasting."

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