Ash Wednesday
marks the onset of the
Lent,
the 40-day period of fasting and abstinence. It is also known as the "Day of
Ashes". So called because on that day at church the faithful have their
foreheads marked with ashes in the shape of a cross.
The name 'Day of Ashes' comes from "Dies Cinerum" in the Roman Missal and
is found in the earliest existing copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary. The
concept originated by the Roman Catholics somewhere in the 6th century.
Though the exact origin of the day is not clear, the custom of marking the
head with ashes on this Day is said to have originated during the papacy of
Gregory the Great. Gregory served as Pope from 590 - 604 A.D.
In the Old Testament ashes were found to have been 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. It was made
universal throughout the Western church at the Synod of Benevento in 1091.
Originally the use of ashes to betoken penance was a matter of private
devotion. Later it became part of the official rite for reconciling public
penitents. In this context, ashes on the penitent served as a motive for
fellow Christians to pray for the returning sinner and to feel sympathy for
him. Still later, the use of ashes passed into its present rite of beginning
the penitential season of Lent on Ash Wednesday.
Putting a 'cross' mark on the forehead was in imitation of the spiritual
mark or seal that is put on a Christian in baptism. This is when the newly
born Christian is delivered from slavery to sin and the devil, and made a
slave of righteousness and
Christ
(Rom. 6:3-18).
This can also be held as an adoption of the way 'righteousness' are
described in the book of Revelation, where we come to know about the
servants of
God. The
reference to the sealing of the servants of
God
for their protection in Revelation is an allusion to a parallel passage in
Ezekiel, where Ezekiel also sees a sealing of the servants of
God
for their protection:
"And the
LORD
said to him [one of the four cherubim], 'Go through the city, through
Jerusalem, and put a mark [literally, "a tav"] upon the foreheads of the men
who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.' And
to the others he said in my hearing, 'Pass through the city after him, and
smite; your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity; slay old men
outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one
upon whom is the mark. And begin at my sanctuary.' So they began with the
elders who were before the house." (Ezekiel 9:4-6)
Unfortunately, like most modern translations, the one quoted above (the
Revised Standard Version, which we have been quoting thus far), is not
sufficiently literal. What it actually says is to place a tav on the
foreheads of the righteous inhabitants of Jerusalem. Tav is one of the
letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and in ancient script it looked like the
Greek letter chi, which happens to be two crossed lines (like an "x") and
which happens to be the first letter in the word "Christ"
in Greek Christos). The Jewish rabbis commented on the connection between
tav and chi and this is undoubtedly the mark Revelation has in mind when the
servants of
God
are sealed in it. The early Church Fathers seized on this
tav-chi-cross-christos connection and expounded it in their homilies, seeing
in Ezekiel a prophetic foreshadowing of the sealing of Christians as
servants of
Christ.
