Welcome to the Pearl of Great Price Podcast, it’s the 17th of February and today Christians all over the world mark the first day of Lent as Ash Wednesday. Services are held in Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and some other Protestant churches. Eastern Orthodox churches begin Lent on a Monday and therefore do not observe Ash Wednesday. Its name come from the placing of ashes on the foreheads of participants to either the words "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" or the dictum "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." This ritual replaces the normal penitential rite that occurs at the beginning of many Christian Services. The ashes are prepared by burning palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebrations
The use of ashes to publicly signify penitence is an ancient tradition in the Church. It has evolved significantly, for the first 500 years – those guilty of serious sins such as murder, adultery or apostasy, a public renunciation of one’s faith, were excluded for a time from the Eucharist, During that time they did acts of penance, like extra praying and fasting, and lying “in sackcloth and ashes,” at the entrance of places where Christians would gather for the Lords Supper. Because of its isolation, the Celtic Church had no knowledge of the institution of a public penance in the community of the church which could not be repeated, drawing from Eastern monastic traditions Celtic penitential practices consisted of confession, acceptance of satisfaction fixed by the priest, and finally reconciliation. This has since become widely adapted by the universal church.
Although Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation for those in the Catholic tradition, it is traditionally one of the most heavily attended non-Sunday masses of the liturgical year. This maybe because of the status of ashes as sacramentals rather than sacraments. Sacramentals are objects or actions that can be ritually blessed by a priest to stimulate reverence. Unlike its discipline regarding sacraments, the Catholic Church does not exclude anyone from receiving sacramentals, even the non-baptised. Another theory for the popularity of Ash Wednesday is when a comparison is made with Good Friday. Both days have remained liturgically very popular at a time of declining church attendance. It has been observed that both days also involve one-off rituals that are very physical, receiving the ashes and also venerating the cross. These physical expressions seem to have great currency in a way of expressing sorrow, repentance and devotion.
Many priests, vicars and pastors and worship leaders encourage the wearing of ashed crosses after the service as a witness in an increasingly secular culture. Morgan Guyton, a Methodist pastor and leader in the Red-Letter Christian movement, encourages Christians to wear them throughout the day as an exercise of religious freedom. Red-Letter Christians constitute a non-denominational movement within Christianity to highlight New Testament verses printed in red ink, to indicate the words attributed to Jesus without the use of quotations. Since 2007, some Anglicans, Lutherans, and Methodists in the US, have participated in 'Ashes to Go' activities, in which clergy go outside of their churches to public places, such as city centres, sidewalks and railroad stations, to distribute ashes to passers-by, and even to people waiting in their cars for a stoplight to change. Anglicans and Catholics in parts of the United Kingdom such as Sunderland, are offering Ashes to Go together: as an ecumenical effort. On Ash Wednesday 2017, Father Paddy Mooney in the Irish town of Glenamaddy, set up an Ashes to Go station through which commuters could drive and receive ashes from their car
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