HOMILY FOR ASH WEDNESDAY
TEXTS : JOEL 2: 12-18; II COR 5: 20- 6:2; MATT 6:1-6, 16-18

Ash Wednesday (dies cinerum) marks a period of forty days (excluding Sunday) resonating with the forty days Jesus spent in the desert. It is the Church’s “Day of Atonement.” Its very name comes from the Jewish practice of doing penance wearing “sackcloth and ashes.” The Old Testament tells us how the people of Nineveh, King Ben Hadad of Syria, and Queen Esther fasted wearing sackcloth and ashes.In the early Church, Christians who had committed serious sins were instructed to do public penance wearing sackcloth and ashes. The Church instructs us to observe Ash Wednesday and Good Friday as days of full fast and abstinence. Fasting is prescribed to reinforce our penitential prayer during the Lenten season. The prophet Joel in the first reading insists that we should experience a complete conversion of heart, and not simply regret for our sins.

The ash we receive today reminds us of our nothingness! During the imposition of ash on our foreheads one of the forms used is: “Remember dust thou art and to dust thou shall return” (Gen 3:19).
The Lenten period generally calls for repentance. St. Paul calls for our reconciliation with God as we have been ushered into a favourable time of salvation.

In today’s gospel Jesus speaks about three religious practices found in all religions, namely, almsgiving, prayer and fasting. He approves these practices, but with a difference. He criticizes the manner in which they are practiced by pious Jews and points out their wrong motives. He attaches three prescriptions to be followed by his disciples while practicing these deeds of piety: (1) the type of behaviour they should avoid; (2) the proper motive or attitude they should observe; and (3) the type of reward they should look for.

Jesus emphasizes three times the need to avoid hypocrisy and showiness while practicing each of these pious deeds (6:2,5,16). Instead of practicing these deeds like actors in a pious drama, these deeds are not to be practiced to attract people’s attention (6:1,3,6,17) or to get a merit certificate from God. Jesus’ instruction to shut the door of one’s room and pray privately does not mean we should not pray in common or publicly. What it means is that prayer should not be done with other ulterior motives than for glorifying God and entering into a deeper communion with him. Here Jesus points out how self-centeredness can be the motive for even the best of religious practices. If they are done for personal glory rather than for God’s, they lose their real meaning or purpose.

PASTORAL APPLICATIONS
1. The first Lenten observance of almsgiving must be broadly understood to include all charitable deeds and sharing of our goods with the needy as well as solidarity with those whom we have excluded from our schemes. It is an expression of our gratitude to what God has given us out of his bounty and our responsibility to share something of that with the have-nots.

2. Prayer should proceed from our genuine love of God, and lead to a deeper communion with him flowing into more committed service to our neighbours.

3.Fasting includes all acts of penance and abstinence. Lenten abstinence from meat, alcohol, smoking, sex, etc., is to be practiced for spiritual benefits and not purely for health reasons like lowering one’s cholesterol or weight control. Nor penance should be done for its own sake, or just for experiencing a good deal of pain by giving up something dear to us without using it as a means to change of hearts. Fasting and acts of penance need to be signs of our genuine repentance - a turning away from evil and turning back to God. When done with pure motive, they can lead us to an inner disposition for repentance and sorrows for our sins.

These are aids for “dying to sin and rising with new life” when we shall celebrate EASTER.

Finally, in this Year of Mercy, Pope Francis invites the whole Church to practice in a visible manner the traditional works of mercy divided into two categories:

(1) The Corporal Works of Mercy – to feed the hungry; to give drink to the thirsty; to clothe the naked; to shelter the homeless; to visit the sick; to visit the prisoners; to bury the dead; and

(2) The Spiritual Works of Mercy – to instruct the ignorant; to counsel the doubtful; to admonish sinners; to bear wrongs patiently; to forgive offences willingly; to comfort the afflicted; to pray for the living and the dead.

In order to do Lenten penance in this Year of Mercy, all of us could try to choose any one of the corporal works of mercy and put them into practice in the following manner: by not wasting food; sending a portion of one’s food (not left over food) to an orphanage; making drinking water available to passers-by; saving water or resisting its wastage; sharing our space with others for rest between work or for studies of children; donating blood to the sick; visiting a home for the aged with small gifts; visiting the sick in homes or in hospitals; giving material help to the family of prisoners, internally displaced persons; visiting bereaved families and visiting the cemetery to pray for the repose of those who are not related to us.

In a similar way we could choose any one of the spiritual works of mercy and put them into practice in the following manner: by sharing our faith with those who have doubts of faith; accompanying a relative or neighbour undergoing mental or physical pain to a retreat/ healing/ prayer/ counseling centre; explaining to others the truth of our faith as much as we know; inviting neighbours to attend Mass; volunteering to teach catechism in the parish; admonishing somebody who has gone astray from Christian path and showing the way to turn back to God; forgiving; doing a charitable deed; praying to be patient with those who are unbearable; praying for the persons against whom we have grudges; etc.

May God’s grace give us the consistency and resolve we need to pass through this Lenten period and come out better Christians who will rise with Christ with renewed and regenerated hearts.

Have a wonderful Lenten period!

cc. lalasticlala, Seun, mynd44, ishilove

Ash wednesday does it has any pagan adoption?

excellencyabia1:
Ash wednesday does it has any pagan adoption?

No not at all! I'm yet to come across any research work that suggests thus

Ezeebube2:


No not at all! I'm yet to come across any research work that suggests thus

did the early apostles like peter and paul observed it?

excellencyabia1:
did the early apostles like peter and paul observed it?

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.

ur question should have been if d using of ash as a mark of humility or repentance was biblical since that's d only way u guys attack catholics

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.
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.
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. It is also part of the
background to the Catholic practice of making the sign of
the cross, which in the early centuries (as can be
documented from the second century on) was practiced by
using one's thumb to furrow one's brow with a small sign of
the cross, like Catholics do today at the reading of the
Gospel during Mass.

Ezeebube2:


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.

did the early apostles observered it if it is so essential. And why does it has to stay up to so many years before coming in. Please let me state that i am just inquisitive.

excellencyabia1:
did the early apostles observered it if it is so essential. And why does it has to stay up to so many years before coming in. Please let me state that i am just inquisitive.

Jesus fasted for forty days.

excellencyabia1:
did the early apostles observered it if it is so essential. And why does it has to stay up to so many years before coming in. Please let me state that i am just inquisitive.

ur question should b if it's biblical. I guess u already know that answer. and for d second part of ur question, it didn't just come in, the catholic church have been observing it even before Emperor Constantine legalised the christian religion

malvisguy212:
Jesus fasted for forty days.

with ash?