|
History of 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.
Culled from:
Holiday Spot |
|
