Subject: Re: Ash Wednesday
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 00:12:25 +0000
To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>

From:          Luana Fabry <sos@fan.net.au>
To:            heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject:       Re: Ash Wednesday

heb_roots_chr@mail.geocities.com wrote:
> 
> From:          Irene L. Hatton
> To:            <heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
> Subject:       Ash Wednesday

Hi All

Ash Wednesday doesn't have any connection to the ancient Jewish ritual
of mourning by placing ashes on one's head. This was mostly done by the
prophets when making intercession on behalf of the people. Yeshua has
made intercession for us. There is no more need for ashes. We now have
"beauty for ashes; the oil of joy for mourning!" Isaiah 61:3

Ash Wednesday is a Roman Catholic invention, where the priest marks the
people "on their forehead" with the ashes of burned palm branches.
Following is some official Catholic info on Ash Wednesday. You will see
how ash Wednesday is really a pagan ritual.

Luana Fabry

                       *******************************

		Ash Wednesday

The Wednesday after Quinquagesima Sunday, which is the first day of the
of Lenten fast. The name dies cinerum (day of ashes) which it bears in
the Roman Missal is found in the earliest existing copies of the
Gregorian Sacramentary and probably dates from at least the eighth
century. On this day all the faithful according to ancient custom are
exhorted to approach the altar before the beginning of Mass, and there
the priest, dipping his thumb into ashes previously blessed, marks the
forehead -- or in case of clerics upon the place of the tonsure - of
each the sign of the cross, saying the words: "Remember man that thou
art dust and unto dust thou shalt return."

 The ashes used in this ceremony are made by burning the remains of the
palms blessed on the Palm Sunday of the previous year. In the blessing
of the ashes four prayers are used, all of them ancient. The ashes are
sprinkled with holy water and fumigated with incense. The celebrant
himself, be he bishop or cardinal, receives, either standing or seated,
the ashes from some other priest, usually the highest in dignity of
those present. In earlier ages a penitential procession often followed
the rite of the distribution of the ashes, but this is not now
prescribed. 

There can be no doubt that the custom of distributing the ashes to all
the faithful arose from a devotional imitation of the practice observed
in the case of public penitents. But this devotional usage, the
reception of a sacramental which is full of the symbolism of penance
(cf. the cor contritum quasi cinis of the "Dies Irae") is of earlier
date than was formerly supposed. It is mentioned as of general observance for both
clerics and faithful in the Synod of Beneventum, 1091 (Mansi, XX, 739),
but nearly a hundred years earlier than this the Anglo-Saxon homilist
Ælfric assumes that it applies to all classes of men. "We read", he
says, "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. 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." And then he enforces this
recommendation by the terrible example of a man who refused to go to
church for the ashes on Ash Wednesday and who a few days after was
accidentally killed in a boar hunt (Ælfric, "Lives of Saints", ed.
Skeat, I, 262-266). It is possible that the notion of penance which was
suggested by the rite of Ash Wednesday was was reinforced by the
figurative exclusion from the sacred mysteries symbolized by the hanging
of the Lenten veil before the sanctuary. 

>From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright c 1913 by the Encyclopedia
Press, Inc.

**************************************************************************