I always get a kick out of the way my friends and colleagues celebrate Mardi Gras with a fervor not seen since before the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus. But mere hours later the liturgical calendar is forgotten. These devout observers of Shrove Tuesday can be heard telling the Christians they have “dirt on your forehead.”
The Montgomery Advertiser ran a quick Q&A for readers so that they could learn more about today’s holy day:
1. What is Ash Wednesday?
Ash Wednesday is the day Lent begins in the Catholic faith. It occurs 40 days after Good Friday.
It is rather impressive for the reporter Darryn Simmons to include two errors within two sentences. Of course, Lent begins today for all Christians who follow the liturgical calendar, not just Roman Catholics. And it doesn’t occur 40 days after Good Friday but before. Other papers had some of the same confusion, thinking Ash Wednesday is only celebrated by Catholics. More than one story mentioned the interesting note that many Catholic churches have changed the recitation while marking foreheads from the Genesis verse (“For dust you are and to dust you will return”) to “Turn away from sin and believe the Gospel” or some variant thereof.
Many newspapers had good and interesting articles about Ash Wednesday. Jean Gordon with the Clarion-Ledger looked at how the day is observed in Methodism. Arizona Daily Star religion reporter Stephanie Innes had this delightful lede to her story on how the practice is celebrated in her region.
Probably my favorite story, headlined “Believers give up to grow up during Lent,” came from Newsday’s Michael Amon, who spoke with various clergy about Lenten disciplines such as fasting and abstinence:
The Venerable Theodore Bean, an archdeacon for the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, made this remark in his monthly newsletter: “I hasten to point out that eating lobster ‘because it is not meat’ really rather defeats the purpose of Lenten abstinence.”
It’s a point about sacrifice that Long Island clergy say they have to make more often.
“We are a society of instant gratification,” Bean said in an interview. “We’re not a society that views giving up things and taking the long-term view as being good for us.”
The article includes an anecdote about a Roman Catholic priest who says his pre-Lenten programs designed to prepare people to sacrifice during Lent probably caused people to leave church.
“People don’t always like to hear about it,” Hanson said. “They want to have control, and sacrificing is giving up control.”
The standard story explaining Ash Wednesday is good and necessary, but Amon really pushed the story forward and gave readers an even better understanding of the significance of the day and penitential season.
Los Angeles Times writer Francisco Vara-Orta took a spin on the traditional Ash Wednesday story by looking into how churches get their ashes. Traditionally churches keep palm fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebrations, burn them and mix them with oil. But that’s changing, Vara-Orta finds out:
Some churches abandoned the practice because of the fire danger. Some responded to air quality laws.
At Our Mother of Good Counsel Church, a parishioner who for years made the ashes for Ash Wednesday died in the 1980s — and so did the parish’s practice of burning fronds from the previous Palm Sunday for the centuries-old rite.
So Our Mother of Good Counsel, like churches all over the country, began ordering ashes from a church supply store. Some churches buy them in person, others on the Internet.
The lengthy article discusses the church supply store business and extent of selling ashes. The one thing I wanted was a bit more discussion about the propriety of the change. While Vara-Orta quoted some folks defending their decision to purchase the ashes, it might have been interesting to talk to someone who didn’t think it was such a good idea. But it’s still a great new angle on an ancient story.
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Comments (21) |
February 21, 2007, at 11:20 am
Wow, Mollie. Careful where you throw stones.
Lent does NOT begin today for all Christians. My family and I began our Lent observance on Clean Monday, by the Orthodox liturgical calendar.
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February 21, 2007, at 11:23 am
There’s also the fact that Ash Wednesday is about 44 days before Good Friday (depending on when you start counting).
That’s because the Sundays aren’t part of Lent.
I’ll refrain from comment on Mr. Anthony’s remark.
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February 21, 2007, at 11:27 am
Jason,
Duly noted. I was referring to Western liturgical churches but I should have clarified that. Terry jokes that I’m on the Protestant liturgical beat here.
I will mention that one of the articles I read did note the Orthodox differential — except it said that Lent begins at sunset on Sunday for some Orthodox Christians.
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February 21, 2007, at 11:29 am
Strangely enough, I just accidentally rubbed my ashy itchy forehead and found that my hand smells incensy. Is there anything in what you read that mentions aromatic olive oil?
This is a first for me, as far as I can remember.
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February 21, 2007, at 11:48 am
I will mention that one of the articles I read did note the Orthodox differential — except it said that Lent begins at sunset on Sunday for some Orthodox Christians.
That’s because Orthodox liturgical days technically begin at sunset on the previous day.
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February 21, 2007, at 11:51 am
I will mention that one of the articles I read did note the Orthodox differential — except it said that Lent begins at sunset on Sunday for some Orthodox Christians.
Yes, Orthodox days start at sunset the night before. So Lent starts Sunday evening, marked as Monday on the calendar.
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February 21, 2007, at 11:51 am
Jinx!
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February 21, 2007, at 12:01 pm
Well, as long as we’re splitting hairs - Sundays ARE part of Lent in the Orthodox tradition and ARE NOT part of Lent in the Western tradition. The Orthodox Lent ends a week before Easter - Holy Week is entirely different fast.
On a personal note, the Greek Orthodox Lent is pretty intense for the devout, and I must say that Mardi Gras blowouts that happen two days into it always make me grumpy. Is this what it feels like to be Jewish at Christmas?
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February 21, 2007, at 12:01 pm
They use palm bark. To make darker ashes.
They burn the palms right after Palm Sunday, because palms don’t keep — they get dried out.
*sigh* Beyond the whole issue of _buying ashes_ (which sounds like something an OT prophet would spend several verses inveighing against), the ash vendors are obviously missing the scriptural and liturgical point here.
I do have sympathy for the folks who buy ashes due to local law, but it sounds like something that coalitions of churches should be handling. How hard would it be?
And why the heck do you have an archdiocese, if not to deal with legal and safety problems and assist the local churches when it gets too much for them? Why not hire a truck, load it up with almost a year old dried up fronds, drive off to an incinerator, and come back with a truck full of ashes? At least then the parish would have some sort of ash continuity. Heck, why doesn’t the Knights of Columbus do this? Or the Catholic troops of Scouts?
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February 21, 2007, at 12:34 pm
A priest with one foot in the East, the other in the West here.
Re: ashes. As an alternative to burning palm branches, charcoal of the type used to burn incense makes great ashes.
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February 21, 2007, at 1:25 pm
Last year, or maybe longer ago, I read an article in (probably) the WSJ about burning palm fronds for ashes. It’s hard . They don’t burn well, for starters, and then you have to get them burned up to very fine ash. According to the story there were only a few place in the USA that knew how and would take the time to do it right.
And just a note - I’ve tried burning the Palm Sunday frond myself - even when it’s a year old, I could barely get it to light. So I believe that burning a large batch of the things takes knowledge and skill.
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February 21, 2007, at 1:43 pm
There is also another error at the bottom of the article where it says “Source: James Azrin of the Nazareth Resource Library”
What they meant was to write James Akin. They lifted the information from Catholic Apologist’s Jimmy Akin’s old web site. Though they introduced the error.
http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/ash_wed.htm
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February 21, 2007, at 2:21 pm
Buying ashes off of the Internet … do you look for sales (eBay?), buy in bulk and split it amongst other churches in your area, and how do you find an “approved” source? As Maureen mentioned, surely the archdiocese (or whoever administers the group) can coordinate this kind of a task.
Most of the “Lenten” coverage in these parts (NC) was from New Orleans: the difference between uptown and downtown, how the city is still recovering, business is still bad since about half of the population has not moved back.
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February 21, 2007, at 2:37 pm
And as a slight addition, Lent also began on Monday (or Sunday night if you want to be super-technically correct) for millions of Eastern Catholics as well.
And, to add to Emily’s post, Roman rite Catholics also technically begin a new liturgical day on the evening before. That’s why “Saturday night Mass” is actually a Sunday celebration.
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February 21, 2007, at 2:52 pm
The main reason I am surprised about this error is that the AP Stylebook covers Easter and Lent with entries for each. I was raised in the Christian church but did not understand how Easter’s date was chosen until I read my first AP Stylebook as a journalism major in college.
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February 21, 2007, at 3:15 pm
The ashes should really be charcoal. I cook the palms for my LCMS parish; it is easy. I put the fronds in the attic to dry for a couple of months, then wrap them in foil and slow cook them on my backyard grill, which has a lid to keep in the smoke. I grind the coals to powder in a food mill.
If you burn palms to ash, you get an extremely fine white filmy ash, but what you want for liturgical use is the coals, so that you get a black representation of sin.
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February 21, 2007, at 3:17 pm
MJBubba,
Do you combine the two then?
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February 21, 2007, at 4:00 pm
When I wrap the palms up to be burned, I first cut them to the length of the food mill that they will be ground in, then wrap them tightly in heavy duty aluminum foil, pierce a few times to let the vapor out, and throw them on the grill (after removing supper), and close the lid. A small portion of the palms always burns up to ash, and I just mix that in with the coals.
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February 21, 2007, at 5:46 pm
Amon’s story, “Believers give up to grow up during Lent”, was probably my favorite article too for the reasons Mollie’d mentioned. But I also think it’s so interesting that the day serves as a bonding day for Christians within their communities, as opposed to just their own personal relationships with Christ, as I’d before sort of imagined.
Really liked this line from it…
Also, agree with Mollie that while the Ash Wednesday story *is* a good and necessary one, this one took it a step further to make it even a beautiful story.
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February 24, 2007, at 10:39 pm
The Pressconnects site got it wrong too:
“Though most calendars note today as Ash Wednesday, Lent doesn’t start until (emphasis mine) sunset Sunday for some Orthodox adherents.”
….actually, Orthodox Lent started -last- Sunday evening (for Monday). Perhaps the reporter had heard something about this coming Sunday being the first Sunday in Lent…and in all fairness, it is confusing, as the big event for most Orthodox this Sunday is the Sunday of Orthodoxy Vespers…which really are vespers for Monday, as the day does begin in the evening for us…..are we confused yet?
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February 26, 2007, at 3:35 pm
Sure, I get fed up with references to “The Catholic observance of Holy Week”, etc.
But now Archbishop O’Malley blogs “For Catholics, Lent is a very important time.” (Cardinal Seán’s Blog)
Anyone care to tell him that he should have said “Christians”?
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