Non Solum: Ash Wednesday

A reader recently wrote in asking: “Would it be wrong to encourage people to self-impose ashes on Ash Wednesday, as a sign of their repentance?”

In the Roman Rite, ashes are placed on the heads of the faithful on Ash Wednesday after being blessed by the priest. The rubric following the blessing of the ashes states: “Then the Priest places ashes on the head of all those present who come to him, and says to each one: Repent, and believe in the Gospel. Or: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Most services I have attended utilize lay men and women to help with the distribution of the ashes. The ashes are traced in a cross on the heads of the faithful. This seems to be a matter of custom and is not required.

In one service I attended, the ashes were distributed by the persons in the pews. Your neighbor on your right would place the ashes on your head, then you would place the ashes on the head of your neighbor to the left. This was a powerful experience.

I do not think, however, it is a good idea to place ashes on your own head. Liturgy often entails ritual acts being done to us (baptism by water, anointing of chrism, etc.) and I think our passivity in ritual performance is important, especially in an age where we are used to acting as autonomous individuals.

I am curious, however, what your community does for Ash Wednesday. How does your community distribute ashes?

Please comment below.

Nathan Chase

Nathan P. Chase is Assistant Professor of Liturgical and Sacramental Theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, MO. He has contributed a number of articles to the field of liturgical studies, including pieces on liturgy in the early Church, initiation, the Eucharist, inculturation, and the Western Non-Roman Rites, in particular the Hispano-Mozarabic tradition. His first book The Homiliae Toletanae and the Theology of Lent and Easter was published in 2020. His second monograph, published in 2023, is titled The Anaphoral Tradition in the ‘Barcelona Papyrus.’

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Comments

21 responses to “Non Solum: Ash Wednesday”

  1. Matthew Hazell

    Don’t we already impose signs of repentance on ourselves by fasting and doing penance (especially) during Lent? So rather than coopting a ritual action (in a rather bizarre way, IMO), wouldn’t it be better to make use of already-existing devotional exercises and encourage people to “give something up” for Lent, teaching why fasting and penance are important?

    Reply
  2. Tony Robertson

    I still remember the religious culture shock after many years of having ashes traced on my forehead attending my first Ash Wednesday service in Papua New Guinea and having the ashes sprinkled on my head. The community with which i worshiped was led by a French Canadian order, The Montfort Fathers and it seems this was the custom they brought with them.

    Certainly in Australia my experience of the public wearing of ashes serves both as a counter cultural public message as well as a personal faith statement. In a highly visual society where tattoos, body piercings and dress codes are used to make statements it seems that the sight of ashes on foreheads serves a valuable purpose.

    My local L’Arche Community does not have the services of clergy for many of our community gatherings and it is quite powerful to have one of the core members, a person living with intellectual disability lead us in the distribution of the ashes on our foreheads.

    Reply
  3. Christian McConnell

    I have a hard time imagining what the point of self-imposition might be.

    Reply
  4. Fr. Allan J. McDonald

    First Baptist Church immediately next door to my church offers ashes on Ash Wednesday. A few years back our local newspaper did a story on Ash Wednesday customs of the various Churches in town. The pastor of First Baptist succinctly stated why his church members would place the ashes on themselves and it had to do with the fact we are all “priests” in their tradition (Baptist, Reformation tradition) unlike Catholics who need a priestly intermediary. Thus it went to the heart of Holy Orders and why most Reformation Churches did away with it and substituted a form of ministry of leadership, preaching and administration. Obviously lay people can offer or minister the ashes to other Catholics, but the sense of ministry and conveying to others is maintained. Certainly this is true with the distribution of Holy Communion by Extraordinary Ministers as well. Why not just self-communicate which was experimented with in the 1970’s? It was related to an exaggerated theology of the priesthood of the laity because of Baptism, a theology that sought to diminish the role of the ordained priest in the liturgy and life of the Church and very much connected to Protestant understandings of priesthood of the laity and an effort from an ecumenical point of view to bring the two differing points of belief into harmony.

    Reply
  5. Rick Reed

    As for me, I don’t get why we hear a gospel telling us not to do what we’re about to do.

    Reply
    1. Fr. Allan J. McDonald

      @Rick Reed – comment #4:
      I find that interesting too! 🙂

      Reply
  6. Fergus Ryan

    When I was a child in the 1980s and 1990s, we rarely had evening Masses in our rural parish so we had either a priest possibly coming to the school to put ashes on our foreheads (and nothing else) or a parent bringing home ashes in an envelope having picked some up in the church earlier in the day (after Mass or simply taking some from the table left at the sanctuary gates). Hence, we had to do it for ourselves a lot. One year as a high school chaplain I offered “second chance Ashes” a week into Lent as we’d been on school break the previous week. It was very popular, partly because the students wouldn’t have gone to Mass on Ash Wednesday during the break (and partly as a welcome distraction during morning break). I had only received ashes myself on the previous Sunday in the Ambrosian rite so it was a stop-start beginning to Lent.

    Reply
  7. Jean Romains

    I too do not understand why ashes are placed on the forehead. Even the rubric states, ‘on the head.’ In Italy, the ashes are not placed on the forehead but on top of the head. That seems to eliminate the public display of ‘righteous deeds.’ MT 6:1

    However, in our parish, the faithful go up in a line to the front of the church to receive the ashes on the forehead by the priest or lay minister as a hymn is sung/chanted.

    Reply
  8. John Swencki

    I feel that self-imposing ashes is a penitential act we ourselves choose to adopt for ourselves. In the grand Old Testament tradition those who mourned rent their own garments, and those who chose to express repentance covered themselves in ashes.
    IMO, the ministerial act Fr Alan refers to is the preaching & exhorting to repentance; sprinkling ashes on your forehead (or rending your own garments) is a personal response to this.

    Reply
  9. Jim Pauwels

    I suppose that in giving the ashes to one another, we’re reinforcing the communal aspect of our faith. It seems to suggest that it’s all our duties to encourage one another to repent. That seems like something worth embracing.

    Reply
  10. George Jones

    Given the clarity of the rubric (“The PRIEST places ashes…”), I think the answer to the reader’s question is “Yes, it would be wrong to encourage people to self-impose ashes.”

    Perhaps during Lent the reader would find it a useful mortification to stifle the desire for liturgical self-expression.

    Reply
  11. Jay Edward

    Christianity is not a do it yourself religion, I think I heard somewhere…

    Reply
  12. Abe Rosenzweig

    Hell, If Thecla could baptize herself, why not dump some ashes on your own noggin?

    Reply
    1. Karl Liam Saur

      @Abe Rosenzweig – comment #13:
      Only if you’re in the middle of an act of martyrdom, it would seem. Baptism of blood.

      Reply
  13. Halbert Weidner

    I was in Mexico in the early 70s on Ash Wednesday at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. There were impossibly huge crowds and so a bowl of ashes with the words Repent and believe in the Good News on a poster by the bowl. It would simply be impossible in my opinion to gather enough priests in the city where priests celebrating multiple Masses on the weekend are the norm. #9 i think has it. Tossing ashes on ourselves and rending our own garments was the response to the Word.

    Reply
  14. joseph mangone

    While we are on the subject of lent, i am curious of what folks do with the baptismal font/pool and ambry during lent.
    When i was the liturgy director, we had the baptismal pool drained and placed a simple purple cloth over the upper pool. The pascal candle was removed to the sacristy. The chrism was removed from the ambry as well. There were no scheduled baptisms during Lent. We did keep holy water in at the door fonts until the triduum.

    Reply
  15. Jordan Zarembo

    The Roman-style of the imposition of ashes should be allowed as an option throughout the Roman Rite. Some people might not want to be smeared with the penitential ash. However, the custom of the imposition of ashes by another person should continue. Taking a pinch of the ashes and sprinkling it over the crown of your own head negates the reciprocal aspect of the sacramental.

    Reply
  16. Scott Pluff

    Our previous Ash Wednesday Mass schedule was 8:15 a.m., noon, and 7:00 p.m. This year we are adding an early morning service at 7:00 a.m. following the order in the Book of Blessings, basically a Liturgy of the Word service with ashes. We are hoping to reach people who might be on their way to work.

    Reply
  17. Ed Nash

    It is an interesting question to me that is asked here…it kind of makes sense as I bless myself with Holy Water entering the Church…why not ashes.

    I find it comforting to feel the touch of another human in that exchange and if done with care, evokes a deep reflection and cosmetic reminder.

    and #11 George…Lent should call us to humility please.

    Reply
    1. Annie Miry

      @Ed Nash – comment #19:
      The priest is supposed to give us a command when he is imposing the ashes: ‘Remember man that you are dust……’ or ‘Turn away from your sins…….’ This is the most important part and should be addressed to each person individually. As for the priest needing help, in the days when there was, quite literally. standing room only in our Churches, the priests did not cut corners on Ash Wednesday.

      Reply
  18. Annie Miry

    What bothers me much more is that the priest did not say ANY of the form of words – in fact, no words at all. In this parish they use a stamp and he stood there stamping this thing on each one’s forehead in total silence.

    Reply

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