Ash-Wednesday
Ash Wednesday
The first day of Lent, so called from the custom of marking the foreheads of the faithful with blessed ashes. Its date depends upon that of Easter.
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Ash Wednesday
The Wednesday after Quinquagesima Sunday, which is the first day of the Lenten fast.
The name dies cinerum (day of ashes) which it bears in the Roman Missal is found in the earliest existing copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary and probably dates from at least the eighth century. On this day all the faithful according to ancient custom are exhorted to approach the altar before the beginning of Mass, and there the priest, dipping his thumb into ashes previously blessed, marks the forehead — or in case of clerics upon the place of the tonsure — of each the sign of the cross, saying the words: “Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.” The ashes used in this ceremony are made by burning the remains of the palms blessed on the Palm Sunday of the previous year. In the blessing of the ashes four prayers are used, all of them ancient. The ashes are sprinkled with holy water and fumigated with incense. The celebrant himself, be he bishop or cardinal, receives, either standing or seated, the ashes from some other priest, usually the highest in dignity of those present. In earlier ages a penitential procession often followed the rite of the distribution of the ashes, but this is not now prescribed.
There can be no doubt that the custom of distributing the ashes to all the faithful arose from a devotional imitation of the practice observed in the case of public penitents. But this devotional usage, the reception of a sacramental which is full of the symbolism of penance (cf. the cor contritum quasi cinis of the “Dies Irae”) is of earlier date than was formerly supposed. It is mentioned as of general observance for both clerics and faithful in the Synod of Beneventum, 1091 (Mansi, XX, 739), but nearly a hundred years earlier than this the Anglo-Saxon homilist Ælfric assumes that it applies to all classes of men. “We read”, he says,
in the books both in the Old Law and in the New that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.
And then he enforces this recommendation by the terrible example of a man who refused to go to church for the ashes on Ash Wednesday and who a few days after was accidentally killed in a boar hunt (Ælfric, Lives of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 262-266). It is possible that the notion of penance which was suggested by the rite of Ash Wednesday was was reinforced by the figurative exclusion from the sacred mysteries symbolized by the hanging of the Lenten veil before the sanctuary. But on this and the practice of beginning the fast on Ash Wednesday see LENT.
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HERBERT THURSTON Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume ICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Ash-Wednesday
(dies cinerum), the first day of Lent. It is so called from the custom observed in the ancient Church of penitents expressing their humiliation at this time by appearing in sackcloth and ashes. But it is iot certain that this was always done precisely on Ash-Wednesday, there being a perfect silence in the most ancient writers about it. ‘The discipline used toward penitents in Lent, as described by Gratian, differed from their treatment at other times; for on AshWednesday they were presented to the bishop, clothed in sackcloth, and barefooted; then the seven penitential psalms were sung;: after which the bishop laid his hands on them, sprinkled them with holy water, and poured ashes upon their heads, declaring to them that as Adam was cast out of paradise, so they, for their sins, were cast out of the Church. Then the inferior ministers expelled them out of the doors of the church. In the end of Lent, on the Thursday. before Easter,, they were again presented for reconciliation by the deacons and presbyters at the gates of the church. But this method of treating penitents in Lent carries with it the marks of a more modern practice; for there was no use of the holy water in the ancient discipline, nor seven penitential psalms in their service, but only one, viz. the fifty-first.. Neither was Ash-Wednesday anciently the first day of Lent, till Gregory the Great first added it to Lent to make the number of fastingdays completely forty, which before were but thirty-six. Nor does it appear that anciently the time of imposing penance was confined to the beginning of Lent, but was granted at all times, whenever the bishop thought the penitent qualified for it. In Rome the spectacle on this occasion is most ridiculous. After giving themselves up to all kinds of gayety and licentiousness during the Carnival, till twelve o’clock on Tuesday night, the people go on Ash-Wednesday morning into the churches, when the officiating priests put ashes on their head, repeating the words, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.” The day is kept in the English Church by proper collects and lessons, but without the ashes ceremony. See Bingham, Orig. Eccl. bk. 18, ch. ii, 2; Procter, Common Prayer, p. 278; Burnet, Hist. of Eng. Ref. ii, 94; lartene, De Ant. Eccl. Ritibus, lib. 4: cap. xvii. Treatises on this observance have been written by Gleich (Viteb. 1689), Mittwoch (Lips. 1693), Schmid (Helmst. 1702), Siber (Lips. 1709). SEE ASHES.