Ash Wednesday
March 1, 2006

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From its origins in Judaism, Christianity was highly ritualistic. Thus,
borrowing from the traditional image of Moses and the Israelites forty
years of wandering looking for the Promised Land, and then the forty days
Jesus spent in the wilderness, the early church created 40-day period of
fasting and abstinence. These forty days precede Easter, the central days
of Christianity. The forty day period is known as Lent. The first day of
Lent is known as, Ash Wednesday, since the first day of Lent is always on
a Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is sometimes called the 'Day of Ashes' because
on this day many in the catholic tradition have their foreheads marked
with ashes in the shape of a cross. 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. The Ash Wednesday liturgy, however, can be
traced back to the 6th century. Originally the use of ashes signified
private devotion, or private faith. In time this evolved to being part of
the official rite for reconciling public penitents. The use of ashes
passed into its present rite of beginning the penitential season of Lent
on Ash Wednesday.

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