First the obvious: Ash Wednesday is the holy day on which you are asked to face the facts about yourself. If he has to get people from one place to another, he will form a procession, putting the people in a symbolic order, dressing them in symbolic clothes, and adding other symbols, like the Cross of Jesus going on before. If he has to use candles to light up the lectern, he will think of ways to turn them into symbols, by choosing a certain number, putting them in certain places, lighting them in a certain order, moving them at certain times. He will make even of necessities a dramatic icon. It does seem to me obvious that because man is a symbol-making creature, he will inevitably and rightly make the important things he does mean as much as possible. I can think of one liberal Episcopal liturgist who gets the wrong end of the stick with stunning consistency because he thinks that when he has found the practical origin of a practice he has thereby disposed of it. I assume that the long-established liturgies mean more than they may have been intended to mean. The exegete has to intuit the logic of the rite and how it works in the lives of the worshipers. The rites usually evolved over centuries, and the people who invented and developed them rarely if ever bothered to tell anyone what they were doing. It had never occurred to me that people could be so confident in their religion as to wear its marks in public.īut what does the rite actually mean? What value does it have? I will try to exegete the rite for Ash Wednesday. Exegeting liturgical rites and ceremonies is more an intuitive art than a textual science. I was, as a new Christian, deeply affected by seeing hundreds of people walking around Boston one late winters day with smudges on their foreheads, and finding out that evening, from a woman at a seafood restaurant, why she had that mark on her face. Having enacted the lesson liturgically, having the ashes smeared on your forehead, you will have ashes smeared on your heart.īut all that said, I would not ignore the usefulness of keeping the ashes as a public witness. As a simple test, grab someone at church the Sunday after Ash Wednesday and say, Hey, I had ashes put on my forehead last Wednesday. The answer you will get will be some variation of ∻ig whoop. It is like asking for approval because you didnt sing a hymn during the sermon or came to the 11:00 service at 11:00.Īnd of course you may wipe off the ashes when you leave the service, so that it remains private in the sense of remaining within the gathered community. You win no fame or favor for doing what everyone is supposed to do. Jesus himself observed the public feasts and fasts of his day.Ī great value of liturgical disciplines is that you can do the things you ought to do without worrying about whether you are doing them for the right reasons. He is not referring to a public ritual, which by definition cannot be observed in secret and for observing which you earn no applause. But Jesus is referring to a private fast made public so that people would applaud. After all, the point of smearing ashes on your forehead is to disfigure it in a way everyone else is bound to notice. This seems to be exactly the sort of thing Jesus rejected. As he does so, he tells you that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. In liturgical churches, the priest or pastor marks a small cross on your forehead with ashes, traditionally made by burning the palms from the previous years Palm Sunday. So much, you might think, for the traditional imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face that you appear not to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place. Truly, I say unto you, they have their reward. For they disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men to be fasting. When you fast, Jesus says to us in the Sermon on the Mount, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. The article follows (slightly revised) for those who might find it of interest or use. It reminded me of something I wrote a few years ago for an ecumenical readership, one that included people who would not like or at least not be comfortable with the imposition of ashes. I just returned from the noon Mass at a nearby church, where the priest imposed the ashes with the traditional opening “Remember, O man.” Which cheered me, which may not be quite the feeling one wants on Ash Wednesday.
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