\u201cRemember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christians in many traditions are hearing words such as these today as they receive ashes as a sign of their mortality and desire to do penance.<\/p>\n
Not all Christians, to be sure. Eastern Orthodoxy does not have Ash Wednesday. Neither does the Catholic diocese of Milan, Italy, which follows the ancient Ambrosian rite and begins its penitential season on the first Sunday of Lent.<\/p>\n
For those who do, where do they get their ashes? They are burnt from the palms from Passion Sunday (better known as Palm Sunday) of the preceding year. Parishes either save leftover palms, or else buy palms-burnt-to-ashes from a church supply company.<\/p>\n
Ashes have a long history. It is a tradition in the Old and New Testament to put on sack clothes and ashes as an external sign of repentance. Various Christian writers of early centuries make references to individual Christians following this custom.<\/p>\n
From the beginning of the 6th\u00a0century, the Lenten fast was begun on Ash Wednesday in Rome so as to have a forty-day fast (not counting Sundays) before Easter. There is record in the 8th\u00a0century of the pope processing with the congregation on this day to St. Sabina on the Aventine for the liturgy. During the procession the people sang \u201cLet us don sackcloth and ashes.\u201d<\/p>\n
North of the Alps, it was not enough for this chant to have merely spiritual and symbolic meaning, so the rite of imposing ashes was developed. The practice spread southward into Italy, and in 1091 a council in Benevento decreed that everyone \u2013 clergy and laity, men and women \u2013 receive ashes. Eventually this became the practice in Rome itself, for by the 13th century the pope also received ashes.<\/p>\n
In the U.S., ashes are generally applied to the forehead during the liturgy. In Rome the custom is to sprinkle ashes on the head of the person.<\/p>\n
Contrary to what some mistakenly believe, Ash Wednesday is not a Holy Day of Obligation in the Roman Catholic Church.<\/p>\n
The current Roman rite has two options for the text at imposition \u2013 either the famous Memento homo, quia pulvis es\u2026<\/em> cited above, which is from the 3rd chapter of Genesis, or the line from first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, \u201cRepent and believe in the Gospel.\u201d As evangelically powerful as the line from Mark is, one may regret that the striking line from Genesis is not universal for Catholics.<\/p>\n The ELCA 2006 hymnal Evangelical Lutheran Worship<\/em> says that the people may stand or kneel to receive ashes. The minister says \u201cRemember that you are dust\u2026\u201d The same line is given in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer<\/em> of the Episcopal Church for the giving of ashes.<\/p>\n awr<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Where do the ashes come from?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":40701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3117,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-scholarship-new-ws","category-liturgical-year"],"yoast_head":"\n