Charles Uganwa
Today, most Christian churches celebrate the Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Lenten season in the Church’s liturgical programme. On the day’s liturgy, ashes are sprinkled on the foreheads of Christians. And most Christians go about their daily businesses happily with the ashes on their foreheads.
Some people have queried the significance of this age-long practice of some orthodox Christian churches. Basically, the significance of this ritual is to invite Christians to repentance and remind them of the creation, which makes it clear that man was created out of dust and would eventually return to dust.
Historically, the use of ashes in the Church left only a few records in the first millennium of its existence. Thomas Talley, in his Book, The Significance of Lenten Season (1999:2), said the first clearly datable liturgy for Ash Wednesday that provides for sprinkling ashes is in the Romano-Germanic pontifical of 960. Before that time, ashes had been used as sign of admission to the Order of Penitents. As early as the 6th Century, the Spanish Mozarabic rites call for signing the foreheads with ashes when admitting a gravely ill person to the Order of Penitents. But at the beginning of the 11th Century, it was customary for all the faithful to take part in the ceremony on the Wednesday before lent that included the imposition of ashes. But towards the end of the century, Pope Urban II called for the general use of ashes on that day. Only later did this day come to be called “Ash Wednesday.”
At first, clerics and men had ashes sprinkled on their heads, while women had the sign of the cross made with the ashes on their foreheads. Eventually, of course, the ritual used for women came to be used for men as well. It seems then that our use of ashes at the beginning of Lent is an extension of the use of ashes with those entering the Order of Penitents, those who had committed serious sins, confessed their sins to the bishop or his representative and were assigned a penance that was to be carried out over a period of time. During this period, the penitents had a special place in the Church and wore a special garment. Like the catechumens, they were usually dismissed after the liturgy of the word on Sundays. The whole thing was aimed at conversion because the Church saw falling into sin after Baptism as an indication that the person was not really converted. Lent thus developed in the Church as the whole community prayed and fasted for the catechumens who were preparing for Baptism.
But with the call by the Second Vatican Council for the renewal of Lent, recovering its ancient baptismal character, the recovery was significantly advanced by the restoration of the catechumenate programme mandated by the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Since Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, it is naturally also beginning to recover a baptismal focus. One hint of this is the second formula used by the clergy while imposing ashes on Christians in the following words, “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.”
This implicitly recalls baptismal promises to reject sin and profess our faith in Christ.
Biblically, we find references to the practice of the use of ashes in our own religious tradition in the Old Testament. For instance, in calling for repentance, the Prophet Jeremiah says: “O daughter of my people, gird on sack clothes, roll in the ashes” (Jer 6:26).”
People familiar with Scripture know these passages: Ashes are a sign of mourning in the Bible, often associated with wearing sackcloth, a coarse material. In Job 2:8, Job “sat among the ashes” when he was stricken. When Tamar was raped by Amnon, she “put ashes on her head, and tore the long robe which she wore; and she laid her hand on her head and went away, crying aloud as she went” (2 Samuel 13:19). In Esther, Chapter 4, when Mordecai and the Jews learn of the order for their persecution, they put on sackcloth and ashes.
On the other hand, the Prophet Isaiah critiques the use of sackcloth and ashes as inadequate to please God, but he indicated that this practice was well known in Israel: “Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: that a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?” (Isaiah 58:5).
Also, Daniel pleaded for God to rescue Israel with sack clothes and ashes as a sign of Israel’s repentance: “I turned to the Lord pleading in earnest prayer with fasting sackcloth and ashes” (Daniel 9:3). Perhaps, the best-known repentance in the Old Testament also involves sackcloth and ashes. When Prophet Jonah finally obeyed God’s command and preached in Nineveh, his preaching was amazingly effective and the king appreciated this. When the news reached the King, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, “covered himself with sackcloth and sat in the ashes” (Jonah.3: 6).
Equally, in the book of Judith, we find acts of repentance that specify that ashes were put on people’s heads: “And all the Israelite men, women and children who lived in Jerusalem prostrated themselves in front of the temple building, with ashes strewn on their heads displaying their sackcloth covering before the Lord” (Judith 4:11).
Additionally, in the New Testament, Jesus refers to the use of sackcloth and ashes as signs of repentance. Said he: “Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes” (Mt. 11:21, Lk. 10:13).
Ashes appear frequently in the Pentateuch as the result of the Temple sacrifice, so they were plentiful and symbolised what remained after an offering was burnt up. Ashes and dust are trodden under feet, and thus lowly and despised. Ashes are symbolic of the dead, and in the Babylonian “Descent of Ishtar,” we learn they are the food of those in the underworld. In Matthew 10:14 (Luke 9:5), Jesus tells his apostles to “shake the dust from your feet” if they are unwelcome somewhere.
Finally, there’s the obvious connection between ashes and the dust of the earth from which man is formed in Genesis 2:7. Roman culture also used ashes, with mourners expected to dirty their faces and disorder their hair when grieving.
The penitential use of ashes arises naturally from its link to mourning: We mourn for our sins. As the Psalmist says, “I am a worm and no man” (22:6), and where does a worm crawl but in the dirt?
And so Ash Wednesday sends us into the desert of Lent for 40 days, with ashes on our faces marking us with the sign of humility, penitence and mortality. It is a public sign, and a distinct public assertion of belief, or at least identity of our Christian life, embraced even by those with an irregular practice of the faith.
The meaning of sprinkling ashes on our foreheads today can further be well understood in the readings assigned for Ash Wednesday, which invite us to conversion. The call for continuing conversion makes us embrace the need to fuller life in the risen Christ at Easter.
Indeed, when we receive ashes on our foreheads, we remember who we are. We remember that we are creatures of the earth, we are mortal beings, and we are dust and unto dust we shall return. We remember we are people on conversion journey and members of the body of Christ. Smudge on our foreheads will proclaim that identity with this age-long practice of the Orthodox Churches of sprinkling ashes on foreheads.
Thus renewing our sense of who we really are before God is the core message of the season of Lent, it is very easy to forget and thus we fall into habits of sin, which are contrary to God’s ways. In this, we might be like the Ninevites in the story of Jonah. It was as a result of the wickedness of the people that caused God to send Jonah to preach to them. Jonah resisted the mission and found himself in deep water rescued by a big fish; Jonah finally did God’s bidding and began preaching repentance in Nineveh. His preaching obviously fell on hearts and ears as, in one day, the whole city was converted, including the king. From the beginning of Lent, God’s word calls us to conversion and, if we open our hearts to God’s word, we will be like the Ninevites not only in their sinfulness but also in their conversion. That, simply put, is the point of Ash Wednesday.
•Fr. Uganwa writes from Delta State