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Why Ashes?
6th February, 2008
Jesus retreated
into the wilderness and fasted for forty days to prepare for his
ministry. It was for Him a time of contemplation, reflection,
and preparation. By observing Lent, most Christians join Jesus
on His retreat. Lent consists of the forty days before Easter.
In the western Church, we skip over the Sundays when we count
the days of Lent, because Sunday is always the joyful
celebration of the Resurrection. Therefore, the first day of
Lent in the western Church is always a Wednesday.
Biblical societies relied very heavily on wood fires for heating
and cooking, which meant that keeping ashes under control was a
major housekeeping task. Then as now, if a person was
preoccupied with something serious, they didn’t always tend to
the housekeeping it’s the least of their concerns. Imagine that
there is a death in the family. A friend stopping by to pay
their respects might gently say, "Did you know you have ashes on
your face?"
So ashes became a sign of remorse, repentance, and mourning. At
first, clerics and men had ashes sprinkled on their heads, while
women had the sign of the cross made with ashes on their
foreheads. Eventually, of course, the ritual used with women
came to be used for men as well. Today someone might wear a
black armband to signify that they are in mourning; back then
people put ashes on their foreheads. The origin of the custom of
using ashes in religious ritual is lost in the mists of
pre-history, but there are references to the practice in our own
religious tradition in the Old Testament. The prophet Jeremiah,
for example, calls for repentance this way: "O daughter of my
people, gird on sackcloth, roll in the ashes" (Jer 6:26).
The prophet Isaiah, on the other hand, critiques the use of
sackcloth and ashes as inadequate to please God, but in the
process he indicates that this practice was well-known in
Israel: "Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day
of penance: that a man bow his head like a reed, and lie in
sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable
to the Lord?" (Is 58:5).
The prophet Daniel pleaded for God to rescue Israel with
sackcloth and ashes as a sign of Israel's repentance: "I turned
to the Lord God, pleading in earnest prayer, with fasting,
sackcloth and ashes" (Dn 9:3).
Perhaps the best known example of repentance in the Old
Testament also involves sackcloth and ashes. When the prophet
Jonah finally obeyed God's command and preached in the great
city of Nineveh, his preaching was amazingly effective. Word of
his message was carried to the king of Nineveh. "When the news
reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside
his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in the ashes"
(Jon 3:6).
In the book of Judith, we find acts of repentance that specify
that the ashes were put on people's heads: "And all the
Israelite men, women and children who lived in Jerusalem
prostrated themselves in front of the temple building, with
ashes strewn on their heads, displaying their sackcloth covering
before the Lord" (Jdt 4:11; see also 4:15 and 9:1).
Just prior to the New Testament period, the rebels fighting for
Jewish independence, the Maccabees, prepared for battle using
ashes: "That day they fasted and wore sackcloth; they sprinkled
ashes on their heads and tore their clothes" (1 Mc 3:47; see
also 4:39).
In the New Testament, Jesus refers to the use of sackcloth and
ashes as signs of repentance: "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you,
Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been
done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in
sackcloth and ashes" (Mt 11:21, Lk 10:13). |
