Ashes have at all times symbolized humiliation and mourning. The
Loyal Prophet David declared unto God that, in the affliction of his heart, he
“did eat bread like ashes (Psal. ci. 10) and when this good king had been
gathered to his father's, his penitential deed was imitated in part by the
Gentile monarch of Nineveh, who “ rose up out of his throne,” on the preaching
of Jonas, “ and cast away his robe from him, and was clothed in sackcloth and
sat in ashes.” (Jonas iii. 6.) The Eastern custom of sprinkling dust or ashes
on the head, of sitting in ashes, or casting them up into the air, is, to this
day, a manifestation of true or feigned grief of heart.
The Saints knew well
the holy significance of ashes; they knew that they are memorials of the origin
of man’s body and its destiny, of Christian lowliness of heart, and hence we
read in their lives that they wished to die on a bed of ashes. Their souls,
released from their mortal prisons, rose triumphantly to heaven from the ashes
of humility, of which the material ashes are the types, bright and glorious, like
the tabled Phoenix of olden story.
“ In the midst of the large infirmary of the
Abbey of Cluny,” says De Moleon, in his Liturgical Travels , “ there is a
hollow place six feet long and about two and a half or three feet wide, in
which religious in their last agony were laid, after it had previously been
covered with ashes. The present custom, however, is not to put them in it until
after death. Some communities of Carthusians and Trappists make their dying
brethren pass through the same solemn ceremony.” What cruelty! say the votaries
of the world; — What true charity ! say the children of God. These good monks
thought more of their souls than of their bodies ; ashes are one of the medicines
of the soul, curing it of the vain- glory that the retrospect of a well-spent
life may occasion, and therefore the monks loved to use them.
The present rite
of the Church of signing the foreheads of her children with blessed ashes, in
the beginning of the Lenten fast, is a remnant of the ancient penitential discipline.
In the good old times, when the faithful were more fervent, when they understood
better the malice of sin, and had a deeper horror of it, public penance for certain
crimes was ordained by the Church, and, for the most part, willingly accepted and
faithfully performed. The sorrowing sinner looked upon admission to the penitential
course as a precious boon, as a hopo held out of his reinstatement in the enjoyment
of those spiritual goods which he had forfeited by his transgression.
The
course of penance for those who were to be reconciled on Holy Thursday began on
Ash Wednesday. The penitents, having confessed their sins, came to the Church
on that day with bare feet and in bits of mourning, and humbly begged from the bishop
canonical punishment. The Pontiff clothed them in sackcloth, scattered ashes on
their heads, sprinkled them with holy water, and recited the Seven Penitential Psalms
over them, whilst the attendant dergy lay prostrate on the ground. The bishop
and his ministers then imposed hands on them to ratify, as it were, their solemn
consecration to the course of penance. This ceremony was followed by a pathetic
exhortation, in which the bishop announced to the weeping sinners before him
that as God had driven Adam from Paradise, so was he obliged to exclude them for
a time from the spiritual paradise of the Church. With sorrowing hearts and Countenances
the penitents marched in slow procession to the door of the church The bishop
thrust them out with his pastoral staff, and they passed not again the threshold
of the house of God until Holy Thursday. During this touching ceremony I the
clergy chanted the words which God addressed to fallen man when driving, him t from
the earthly paradise : “ Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy brow ; remember
that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt fret urn.”
There existed in some
dioceses, even as late as the last century, vestiges of the old custom. At Narbonne, public penitents abstained, during all Lent, from entering the Church ;
they recited prayers in their otfn houses during the celebration of Mass, lli
the collegiate church Of Avalon, in the diocese of Austin, it was customary to distribute the ashes oh the steps of the main entrance, in memory of the
exclusion of the penitents froth the Church. At Autun, a etergyihah, in cassock
and surplice, was the Substitute for all the penitents : he was driven from the
church on Ash Wednesday and again admitted on Holy Thursday. In fifra of
time, many of the faithful, through h motive of humility, though not obliged to
h course of public penance, presented themselves oh the first day of Lent to receive
the ashes. This pious custom had spread in the eleventh century throughout the Church,
as appears from a decree of the Council of Benevento in 1091.
The mildness of
the Church in our regard, in contrast with her holy severity towards those of
our forefathers in the faith, who unhappily sinned, yet perhaps far less grievously
and less frequently than we, ought to fill us with sentiments of deep humility
and gratitude. The sign of the holy ashes on our heads should , remind us of
the destiny of our earthly bodies — dust and worms. If we realize well this solemn
truth, we shall undertake readily and joyously our Lenten work of fasting and ,
praying, hoping for a recompense beyond the grave, when corruption will be changed
into in corruption, when this mortal body will be clothed with immortality. The
palm is the emblem of triumph, ashes of humility and death; to show that the term
of earthly triumph is the tomb — of far- extending sway of earthly potentate,
the coffin and the grave. But the blessed palm is an emblem of Christ’s
triumph, and its ashes are, as it were, its seeds, to teach us that we too
shall participate in our Lord’s triumph, if we participate in His sufferings and
His death by a true, solid devotion to His cross, and by dying to ourselves.
Source : The Sacrament of the Holy Catholic Church - REV. WILLIAM J. BARRY
