Ash Wednesday

Did you ever notice how little children always ask, “WHY?”  A friend of mine with a four-year old son, asked her the other day, “Mommy, why don’t we have a maid?”  I learned very quickly not to ask my grandmother, “Why?” because my grandmother’s answer to the question “Why?” was “because ‘Y’ is a crooked letter!” On Wednesday, we begin the season of Lent as we come to Church to receive the imposition of ashes on our foreheads in the sign of the Cross. Lent is a season of repentance.  So “Why” do we have our foreheads marked with a cross? 

Because in Sacred Scripture, a mark on the forehead is a symbol of a person's ownership. By having our foreheads marked with the sign of a cross, this symbolizes that we belong to Jesus Christ, who died on a Cross. This is in imitation of the spiritual mark or seal that is put on a Christian in baptism, when he is delivered from slavery to sin and the devil and made a slave of righteousness and Christ (Rom. 6:3-18). It is also in imitation of the way the righteousness are described in the book of Revelation, where we read of the servants of God (the Christian faithful, as symbolized by the 144,000 male virgins):"Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads" (Revelation 7:3); "[The demon locust] were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those of mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads" (Revelation 9:4); "Then I looked, and lo, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads." (Revelation 14:1).This is in contrast to the followers of the beast, who have the number 666 on their foreheads or hands. 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 Catholic do today at the reading of the Gospel during Mass.

Why is the signing done with ashes? Because ashes are a biblical symbol of mourning and penance. Originally, in the Old Testament, the ashes were those of the animals sacrificed in the Temple for the remission of sins.  The Book of Numbers recounts how these ashes were mixed with water to be sprinkled on the people, places, and things as a sign of purification. The Book of Jonah tells us that the King of Nineveh repented of his sins and sat in the ashes. One of the earliest references to Catholic liturgical use of ashes to mark the beginning of Lent dates from about 1000 AD. Since Lent is the period of repentance and purification, the Old Testament sign of ashes was used to mark the beginning of this penitential period. While we no longer normally wear sackcloth or sit in dust and ashes, the customs of fasting and putting ashes on one's forehead as a sign of mourning and penance have survived to this day. 

Ashes also symbolize death and so remind us of our mortality. Thus when the priest uses his thumb to sign one of the faithful with the ashes, he says, "Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return," which is modeled after God's address to Adam (Genesis 3:19; cf. Job 34:15, Psalms 90:3, 104:29, Ecclesiastes 3:20). This also echoes the words at a burial, "Ashes to ashes; dust to dust," which is based on God's words to Adam in Genesis 3 and Abraham's confession, "I am nothing but dust and ashes" (Genesis 18:27). It is thus a reminder of our mortality and our need to repent before this life is over and we face our Judge.

But why then do we receive them on our forehead and walk around all day with this dirty face when the Gospel tells us to wash our face?  Some prayers are meant to be a private relationship between you and God, others are meant to be an outward show for others to see.  Our deep intimate love, we keep in private, but if children never saw their parents kiss or hug one another how would they know that their parents love each other. We receive ashes also as an external sign to those around us. By wearing ashes, we are calling the world to repentance.  

So why do we need to repent?  The Greek word, for repentance, is “metanoia” and it means to “think differently” or to make 180 degree turn in our life. Where is our life going? We can only be going in one of two directions. We can either be moving toward God or away from God. If you feel distant from God or that God is not a big part of your life, guess who moved?  Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that heaven and hell begin in this life. If we choose to separate ourselves from God, if God is distant from our lives, then when we die there will be a seamless transition into hell. If, however, God is at the center of our life and everything we do, everything we say, everything we choose, is centered on God, then when we die there will be a seamless transition into heaven, with a possible pit stop in purgatory. It has been said that most people are dying to live. Jesus was living to die. Fulton Sheen would say that Jesus was the only person born with the express purpose to die. As followers of Christ, we are called to make that same sacrifice of our life to God.  

What is so important about sacrifice? Sacrifice comes from two Latin words, “sacrum” and “facere.”  “Sacrum” means “holy” and “facere” means “to make.”  Therefore, “sacrum facere,” sacrifice, means to make holy. During Lent we are called to make little sacrifices for the Lord. We may give up candy, or soda, or alcohol, and the Church tell us that we must give up meat on Fridays, but to be a true sacrifice we must give up something good. We cannot make a sacrifice to give up cigarettes, because smoking is bad for your health and we should not be doing it anyway. You have to sacrifice something that is good.  Why? Do we have to give up something?  Why can’t we just do something positive? There is an old saying that “to say goodbye is to die a little.” Fasting and abstinence, (giving up some good worldly pleasure), helps us to say goodbye to this world and helps us prepare for the good things in the life to come. This is why we can never “fast” from prayer or the Sacraments. “To say goodbye is to die a little” makes us realize that giving up some good pleasure prepares us for the ultimate transition, that doorway, known as death.  Death is not a state of being but a doorway to eternal life. That door opens either to heaven or to hell, depending on how we have lived in this life. Fasting and abstinence also reminds us of our death because when we fast, we become hungry and that reminds us that one day we will all die. Fulton Sheen also said that ‘the reason most people fear death is because they have not died yet.” However, if this Lent, we truly repent, if we truly make that 180 degree turn in our thoughts and actions, if we say goodbye not only to our sins but also to some of our good pleasures then we will be preparing ourselves for entering into that great doorway of death and eternal life with the Lord Jesus.  We have to LIVE remembering that we will all DIE. This is why the traditional pray for the imposition of ashes is “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you will return.”


-Fr. Robert T. Cooper, Pastor