eChurch Blog

A reflection on the sacramental of ashes that we received on Ash Wednesday.

Even the darkest moments of the liturgy are filled with joy. And Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lent fast, is a day of happiness, a Christian feast. It cannot be otherwise, as it forms part of the great Easter cycle (Thomas Merton).

On Ash Wednesday small children are thrilled to receive ashes. We can tell them simply that ashes are placed on our foreheads to remind us that someday we will die and go home to heaven. For older children we need to go more deeply into the origin and significance of the day.

The season of holy Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, a solemn day of fast and abstinence. The day receives its special name from the blessing and imposition of ashes in the form of a cross on our foreheads. “Remember man that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Ashes, made by burning palms blessed the previous Palm Sunday, symbolize the transience of our earthly status. The body must fall temporarily into dust. This fact should serve as a challenge to spiritual accomplishments. Through grace we were “buried” in Christ that we may rise with him and “live unto God.” We explain ashes with the “seed” idea. “They are not a sign of death,” Fr. Merton says, “but a promise of life.”

Ashes are a sacramental. Their reception with humility is a sign of penance. We wear them publicly to acknowledge our need to atone for our sins. “God desires not the death of the sinner.” He is moved by our humiliation, and his justice is appeased by satisfaction.

The rite for the blessing and imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday follows the homily at Mass. It begins with an invitation to prayer, whereupon the priest continues with the Blessing of Ashes in which he asks God in his mercy to hear us because of his love for us; to bless the ashes which will mark our foreheads to remind us that we are only dust and will someday return to dust. He asks that we be faithful to the Lenten observance and thus be able to celebrate with clean hearts the paschal mystery.

The priest sprinkles the ashes with holy water in silence. He then imposes the ashes on those who come forward and stand in front of him. To each he says:

“Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)

or

“Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” (Cf. Gen. 3:19)

This solemn blessing and sprinkling with holy water obviously is more than a reminder of death — it is rather a pledge and reminder of resurrection. The whole rite would be sheer nonsense if dust and ashes were our final lot.

The keynote of the Lenten forty day renewal is given by the divine Retreat Master in Ash Wednesday’s Gospel:

When you fast, do not put on a gloomy look, like the hypocrites, for they neglect their personal appearance to let people see that they are fasting. I tell you, that is all the reward they will get.

But when you fast, perfume your hair and wash your face, so that no one may see that you are fasting, except your Father who is unseen, and your Father who sees what is secret, will reward you.

Do not store up riches on earth,where moths and rust destroy them, and where thieves break in and steal them, but store up your riches in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy them, and where thieves cannot break in and steal them. For wherever your treasure is, your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:16-21)

The following is a cross-post by Medusa of CIFWatch:

I have written before here about the persecution of Coptic Christians by Muslims in Egypt, and we have been hearing more of late about the threats posed to other Christian communities throughout the Muslim/Arab world.  It would seem that Muslim mobs of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Ethiopia and elsewhere – possibly whipped up by sermons during Friday prayers – are bent upon realising their threats to the “Sunday people.”  Could it be that, having all but disposed of the “Saturday people” among them, there is no “other” upon which to vent their misplaced rage?

In Egypt, for example, amid the delirious headiness of the revolution they envisage, mobs attacked a Coptic church in the village of Soul, about 30 km from Cairo.  They also vented their rage on Coptic homes and attacked and killed two Coptic families in the village of Sharona near Maghagha, Minya province. Their excuse for the latter was the usual one – a rumour about a liaison between a Christian man and a Muslim woman was enough to ignite the hate fest which subsequently followed.  From the account of the incident, this was no minor flare-up – a mob of 4,000 attacked and set fire to the church.  The Coptic leaders attributed the latter attack on “Islamists” who had taken advantage of the mayhem in Egypt.  We should remember that they had to couch their statement carefully.  They have the status of  dhimmis in Egypt, which has a constitution based on sharia law, and as such cannot rely upon the police to protect them.

It must seem to the Copts of Egypt and indeed all Christians in Muslim countries that hell has descended upon them, and yet compared to the obsessive coverage of Israel at the Guardian, discussion there of the Copts’ plight barely registers – a glaring hypocrisy which was recently exposed by Nick Cohen.

True, there have been some articles, including one by Khaled Dhiab, but most if not all of them however, in true Guardian fashion, fail to address the elephant in the room, the principal driver of the Muslim animus against Christians and Jews – ie the Arab/Muslim tendency to divide the world into Muslim and Other and to view that Other as the eternal enemy.   Islamists personify this mindset and in many Arab countries increasing numbers of attacks on Christians are linked to Islamists.  Such behaviour seems to be all of a piece with a pronouncement from a Salafi-Palestinian Jihadi group leader in Gaza, that it is permissible to kill Jewish and Christian civilians in jihad, since they are ‘fundamentally not innocent’.

One of the more informative CiF articles was written by Amira Nowaira, and entitled “The Slow Death of Tolerance in Egypt”, written on 5^th January, the sub-heading of which refers to the threat from the spate of anti-Christian violence to Alexandria’s “long history of co-existence”.  She makes a plausible enough case for such co-existence, from own experience, but given the Egyptian state’s attitude to the dhimmi population of Christians and Jews and the ease with which the hate mobs can be whipped up and turned loose against them, her picture is an overly rosy one.

Did the sort of tolerance she describes ever exist as a rule in Egypt?  Could it be depended upon to endure without incident?  I have referred above to the dhimmi status of Christians and Jews in Muslim countries.  Bat Ye’or’s[i] scholarly exegesis of Jewish experience under Islamic rule shows Muslim “tolerance” to have a very different connotation to that implied by Nowaira.   Jews and Christians were second class citizens, always at the mercy of their Muslim masters.  They had few rights in law then and Egyptian Copts have only nominal “rights” now.  If their experiences and those of Christians in other Muslim countries offer us little else, they show us that nothing has changed for them and that they still are very vulnerable indeed to Muslim violence.

However, I suspect that Guardian readers will have to wait a very long time before someone of Nick Cohen’s stature and intelligence is provided a platform to comment on this increasingly dangerous phenomenon.

Gregg has posted on his blog, in which he notes:

What I can’t understand, and doubt I ever will, is why certain atheists appear to have turned their atheism into an alternative belief system. It’s as though they are desperate for approval, or want to use their disbelief to form some kind of community to comfort themselves within. There are plenty of things I don’t believe in, but I don’t waste my time thinking about them let alone boring everybody to death banging on about what I don’t believe in.

Why waste time and effort proclaiming that you don’t believe in something? It’s very bizarre.

Indeed.

To which I responded:

I always marvel at this strange behaviour.

I frequent some Christian forums and some of the atheists post more than most Christians. Morning noon and night, they are there, ridiculing.

It’s bizarre and almost as if they’re attracted to Christians for some unknown reason.

They really do obsess at our ‘sky fairies’ and such like.

If they think we are believing in ‘imaginary sky friends’ then why do they bother themselves so?

They will never leave us in peace that’s for sure.

I wonder what the underlying motivation really is?

This is fantastic, albeit a little cynical.

With thanks to The Sacred Sandwich for kind permission to post here:

A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:

British Religion in Numbers – Searchlight on Religion

Royal College of Psychiatrists – Healing by Paradox in the Christian Tradition (PDF)

BBC -Rare King James Bible found in Wiltshire village church

Ugley Vicar – If Gadaffi wins, does that make him OK again?

Lisa Graas – 4000 Muslims Attack Christian Homes, Raze Church Building, Will Conduct Prayers on Ruins

Everday Christian -Will Medicine Stop the Pain?

A comment received in response to this post.

One of many friendly happy chappies to grace me with their opinion of this blog and deleted comments today.

No, you deleted them [comments] because you have no answers being a member of the satanic Canite-Judeo-Christian Religion which means you, like all your sycophant ‘friends’, are full of religious mumbo-jumbo.

Wide is the path to destruction (spiritual ruin) and many there be that find it.

For the life of me I can’t imagine why I would have deleted one of this chaps comments in the first place?

Clayboy has conjured a hymn from Psalm 51. You know, like we all do from time to time, write hymns from the Scriptures!

It’s absolutely excellent and here’s a taster – my fave verse:

Look not on my transgression,
but take away my sin,
acknowledge my confession,
and give me life within.
Create in me a clean heart,
your spirit now renew,
your saving joy be my part,
my life be one with you.

Make sure you check out the whole hymn here.

The first thing to make clear is that I have not deleted your comments because I am in some way affrighted by your extraordinary knowledge, wisdom, perceptions, and troof.

This seems to be the main accusation made by those emailing me.

On the subject of emails, I will not be privately responding to emails regarding deletion, as I feel no need – nor desire – to offer a justification. I am under no legal or moral pressure to publish your comments, or explain why I have hit the delete button.

Out of morbid interest, I oft wonder at the insistence that you are not concerned with the fact that I have deleted your comments, coupled with the fact that you take the considerable time to craft me so many emails relating to the same.

If your comments are overwhelmingly negative towards Christianity, Christians, or me personally, then you can expect your comments to be deleted. Simples.

There are a zillion other platforms for you to vent your spleen about Christians, Christianity, or me.

Please always feel free to start your own blog pointing out the erroneous and biased nature of my posts. Who knows, I might even link to you if it’s interesting and intelligent enough.

Sometimes I delete posts because they are overwhelmingly negative, coupled with yawningly boring, predictable, and embarrassing in their lack of understanding. I delete these comments as much to save you from public shame, as anything else.

Hope this clarifies things for you all.

I can’t help myself, I love this Church billboard. But then again, I am a scumbag!

…….In less than a week, he said the phone has been ringing off the hook – not from Sumbags wanting to be welcomed – but from people criticising it and its message.

But Robbins said there is nothing vulgar about the sign and he doesn’t care if it offends people, assuring this was not his goal.

He said that for people to understand they must read the Bible verse Mark 2:13-17, in which Jesus eats with sinners and tax collectors,  to realise what inspired the billboard.

He claims that the message is based on Jesus Christ’s work to engage sinners and put them on the right path and believes the problem stems from people not going to church.

…read all

Hat-tip – David – Anglican Samizdat