Ash Wednesday - Time We're LENT to Receive - by Mary Ann Cadorna

Ash Wednesday - Time We're LENT to Receive - by Mary Ann Cadorna

Ash Wednesday begins at the stroke of midnight on Fat Tuesday, this year it's 44 days before Good Friday. Lenten season dates back to the Middle Ages and it prepares Christians for Easter by observing fasting, repentance, moderation, and spiritual discipline. During some Ash Wednesday services, the priest or minister will lightly rub the sign of the cross with ashes onto the foreheads of worshipers. It’s mostly observed by Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican denominations and Eastern Orthodox.

The cross on the forehead is a symbol of a person’s ownership by Jesus Christ, who died on a cross. Ashes are used as a biblical symbol of mourning and penance. The ashes symbolize death, which reminds us of our mortality; ashes from last year’s Palm Sunday are used and blessed by a priest. Thus when the priest uses his thumb to sign one of the faithful with the ashes, he may say one of three things:

Although, it’s not required to receive the ashes, nor is it a Holy Day of Obligation, it is however strongly encouraged to receive a spiritual reminder to adopt an attitude of humility, repentance, prayer, fasting and abstinence.

I believe humility allows us to receive and love can never enter a hardened heart. Arrogance positions a person to need no one nor admit to any failings, so how can one ever repent if one is never wrong? Lent is a good time to exercise the act of humility is being humble enough to need God, help and other people in our lives. To know we are human, we make mistakes and at times we fail ourselves and others. The act of repentance allows one to admit guilt, remorse, or shame and one can't have repentance without humility. With prayer one may ask forgiveness, but in fasting, giving up something we take for granted or abstaining from indulgence are the sacrifices one makes to receive. It's hard to hunger for God when one's belly is full, fasting allows us to feel empty and receive spiritual nourishment with gratitude.

In closing, Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent and we have 44 days until Good Friday. The choice is still ours to exercise the Lenten Acts so that we may be humbled for something greater than ourselves, the question becomes can we make the necessary sacrifices and use the “Time We’re Lent to receive?”

By Mary Ann Cadorna

Revised March 1, 2017

February 18, 2015

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