Ash Wednesday’s Changing Tradition

Ash Wednesday is today. It marks the first day of Lent. The ashes symbolise penance and the dust from which God made people. When priests mark Christian’s forehead with the ashes they often say, “Repent and believe in the good news,” or “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” These formulas reveal our frailty, our transitory nature, our weak nature. Because of our weak human nature we commit sin and thus stand in need of repentance. No matter how much progress we make in our life we should never forget that we are dust and unto dust we shall return.Lent, which lasts 40 days not including Sundays, is a season of prayer, penance and fasting in preparation for the Easter season.But the tradition has changed throughout the years. It’s less strict than it used to be.

How fasting has changed: Christians started to fast during Lent in the 5th-9th century. They made it a tradition to remember and reflect on Jesus Christ’s fasting in the wilderness. Back then, they stuck to a strict tradition. People were forbidden to eat meat and fish and had to eat one meal a day. Many Christians still fast today, but it’s a lot different. Instead, they give up watching TV, their social media accounts, drinking alcohol or other pleasurable activities until the fasting ends on Holy Saturday.

How the ashes are made: Christians celebrate Palm Sunday as Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem prior to his crucifixion. They hand out palm leaves to people who attend church and some palms are saved and burnt into ashes so it can be used for next year’s Ash Wednesday. In the Eastern Church, Lent begins on the Monday of the seventh week before Easter and ends on the Friday before Palm Sunday.

And though Ash Wednesday is not in the Bible, the concept of people connecting dust and ashes with repentance and mourning is. Job repents “in dust and ashes” (42:6), and through the prophet Joel, God calls his wayward people Israel to return to him “with all [their] heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning” (Joel 2:12–13).

And Daniel sought the Lord in prayer, pleading for mercy “with fasting and sackcloth and ashes” (9:3).Many Christians wonder if they should be observing Ash Wednesday or not. Trevin Wax offers this reminder in his article “Evangelicals Embracing (and Rejecting) Lent”-regardless of where we stand: I hardly think the church is suffering from too much fasting,” Wax says. “But I do think the church is suffering from too much self-righteousness (and I include myself in this indictment). Lent-being either for or against-can become a way of climbing up on to the pedestal.What is more important than the practices we take on is the heart attitude behind them. If there’s anything we should give up this time of year, it’s our sense of superiority either to those outside the church or those inside the church who do things differently than we do.” Message of the Holy Father for Lent 2023 says “Lenten penance is a commitment, sustained by grace, to overcoming our lack of faith and our resistance to following Jesus on the way of the cross. This is precisely what Peter and the other disciples needed to do. To deepen our knowledge of the Master, to fully understand and embrace the mystery of his salvation, accomplished in total self-giving inspired by love, we must allow ourselves to be taken aside by him and to detach ourselves from mediocrity and vanity. We need to set out on the journey, an uphill path that, like a mountain trek, requires effort, sacrifice and concentration.”