|
Ash Wednesday ...
... is
the day that marks the beginning of Lent,
the forty-day period of confession, penance, and re-centering leading up
to Easter. Easter is observed on the first Sunday after the first
full moon following the vernal equinox (the date/time the sun is
vertical over the equator, when day and night are equal in length, and
when Spring begins). Ash Wednesday is 40 days before Easter (not
counting Sundays); and the period from Ash Wednesday through Holy
Saturday (the day before Easter) is the period of Lent.
The dates for Easter, Ash Wednesday and Lent thus vary each year.
Many Christians gather for
a special worship service on Ash Wednesday to begin their Lenten
preparation for Easter. This worship service often includes Holy
Communion, but always includes the Imposition of Ashes -- the marking of
the worshippers' foreheads with ashes by the pastor, or those assisting
the pastor in leading worship. These ashes are obtained by burning
the palms of celebration from the preceding Palm/Passion Sunday.
The use of ashes has a
long history in Christian and Jewish tradition. Ashes are a
powerful sign of our mortality and the limitations of mortality (e.g.,
"ashes to ashes, dust to dust"). They are also a sign of
repentance and reconciliation, as for example in the many Old Testament
stories of those who repented in sackcloth and ashes, of Job who sat in
ashes seeking reconciliation and understanding, or the prophet Jeremiah
who called on all Israel to repent by putting on sackcloth and rolling
in the ashes (Jeremiah 6:26). We receive the ashes on Ash
Wednesday in the form of a cross marked (imposed) on the forehead, as
part of confronting our own mortality and of confessing our sin before
God in the midst of the community of faith. |
®
