imposition of ashes ash wednesday forehead

160-220) prescribed that the penitent must “live without joy in the roughness of sackcloth and the squalor of ashes.” Eusebius (260-340), the famous early Church historian, recounted in his “The History of the Church” how an apostate named Natalis came to Pope Zephyrinus clothed in sackcloth and ashes begging forgiveness. In his book, De Poenitentia, Tertullian (c. Other examples of this practice among Jews are also found in several other books in the Old Testament, including Numbers 19:9, 19:17 Jonah 3:6 and Esther 4:1.īecause of its scriptural significance, the early Christians continued the practice of using ashes for the same symbolic reason. Just prior to the New Testament period, the rebels fighting for Jewish independence, the Maccabees, prepared for battle using ashes: “That day they fasted and wore sackcloth they sprinkled ashes on their heads and tore their clothes” (1 Maccabees 3:47 4:39). The prophet Daniel recounted pleading to God: “I turned to the Lord God, pleading in earnest prayer, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes” (Daniel 9:3). The prophet Jeremiah calls for repentance by saying: “O daughter of my people, gird on sackcloth, roll in the ashes” (Jeremiah 6:26). Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3-6). Job says to God: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. The gesture was also used to express sorrow for sins and faults. When Tamar was raped by her half-brother, “she sprinkled ashes on her head, tore her robe, and with her face buried in her hands went away crying” (2 Samuel 13:19). Ashes were used in ancient times to express grief. Now let us do this little at the beginning of our Lent that we strew ashes upon our heads to signify that we ought to repent of our sins during the Lenten fast.”Īs Aelfric suggests, the pouring of ashes on one’s body (and dressing in sackcloth, a very rough material) as an outer manifestation of inner repentance or mourning is an ancient practice of the people of God. In his book: Lives of the Saints, he wrote, “We read in the books both in the Old Law and in the New that the men who repented of their sins bestrewed themselves with ashes and clothed their bodies with sackcloth.

One of the earliest description on the rite of threwing ashes on the forehead at the start of Lent is found in the writings of the Anglo-Saxon abbot Aelfric of Eynsham (955-1020).

It is originally called “Feria Quarta Cinerum (day of ashes)” wherein ashes were originally strewn over men’s heads, but, probably because women had their heads covered in the Church, they were placed on the foreheads of women. It occurs 46 days (40 fasting days, if the 6 Sundays, which are not days of fast, are excluded) before Easter, the great feast day of the Lord’s resurrection. Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting, abstinence from meat, and repentance-a day of contemplating one’s transgressions. It is the first day of the Lenten season.

Imposition of ashes ash wednesday forehead