Avondale Pattillo UMC
From Lent to Easter
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Season of Lent. Lent is a season of penance, reflection, and fasting that prepares Christians for celebrating Christ's Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
Why we receive the ashes
In the early centuries during lent, grievous sinners were excluded from Communion and prepared for their restoration. As an outward and public sign of their guilt and sorrow for their sins, the Ninevites wore sackcloth (rough in texture) and were sprinkled with ashes.
On Ash Wednesday our foreheads are marked with ashes in the form of a cross. The ashes, which were a symbol of purification in the Old Testament, remind us that we are mortal. They also symbolize penance. And that's how we get the name Ash Wednesday.
The ashes help us develop a spirit of humility and sacrifice. Some churches burn palm leaves after the current Easter season and use those ashes for the next year's Ash Wednesday service.
Many religious leaders today emphasize Lent within the larger context of the 90 days of Lent-Easter-Pentecost. In this view, Lent is not a season that stands alone, but a season that makes sense only when coupled with the Easter season that follows. The season from Easter to Pentecost is often called Eastertide
"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."
-- from Genesis 3:19
Hair shirts
The distribution of ashes comes from a ceremony of a distant age. Christians who had committed serious sins performed public penance. On Ash Wednesday, the Bishop blessed the hair shirts which they were required to wear during the forty days of penance, and sprinkled over the heads of men and marked on the foreheads of women ashes that were made from the palms from the previous year. Presumably, the women were marked on the forehead because their head was covered.
Then, while the faithful recited the Seven Penitential Psalms, the penitents were turned out of the church because of their sins -- just as Adam, the first man, was turned out of Paradise because of his disobedience. In earlier times, the distribution of ashes was followed by a penitential procession.
Forty days of penance
The penitents did not reenter the church again until Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday) after being reconciled by the forty days' penance and then sacramental absolution. In the tenth or eleventh century this penance by only grave sinners was replaced by a general rite of penitence for the whole congregation, which is what we observe today.
Avondale Pattillo UMC
3260 Covington Hwy., Decatur, GA 30032
404-294-4063
This page was last edited March 9, 2007 0:54 AM
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