From the Archives: "Ash Wednesday: Meaning and History"

Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.

Martin Connell, one of the foremost scholars of the liturgical calendar, focuses in this essay on why Ash Wednesday is important in the life of Christians. Being reminded that we return to dust is, he contends, a powerful antidote to consumerism. All that we have acquired and achieved, in the end, is ashes. The readings on Ash Wednesday from Joel, 2 Corinthians, and Matthew set before the worshippers the practices of Lent: fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. They emphasize that these practices are in response to our “dustiness,” preparing us for the end of our lives. This is an excellent meditation on the meaning of Ash Wednesday. –– Melinda Quivik

Selected Quotes from "Ash Wednesday: Meaning and History"

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I find it quite amazing in retrospect that my own Catholic grade-school teachers started bringing us over to the parish church at [an] early age to celebrate this rite that reminds us of the inevitability of death. Yet I am grateful for having had my forehead blackened with dust even then for the rite was, and continues to be, an important contradiction to this American culture whose consumerist impulse is predicated on people thinking that––with the right products, the right possessions, the right cosmetics––we will live (like we are now) forever. The liturgy of Ash Wednesday reveals this baldly as a deception of our middle-class culture.

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 The rite’s countercultural content is indirect, for the church’s primary impetus is to begin preparation for Easter. But the jarring and somber aspects of the Ash Wednesday liturgy do suggest a needed antidote to the heart of American life-the denial of death.

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The Book of Joel appears as a Sunday reading in the lectionary only once every three years. Yet its message at the beginning of the Forty Days is imperative, for the prophet reminds us that, though the practice of fasting during Lent is part of our outward observance, the more important change is not exterior, but interior. ”Rend your hearts,” says the prophet Joel, “not your garments.”

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Ash Wednesday’s links with preparing candidates for baptism have been largely forgotten. As we move toward future celebrations of the liturgy of Ash Wednesday, let us be mindful of these associations and supportive of those to be baptized. Their path is our path, for, as the liturgy says, “We begin our journey to Easter with the sign of ashes. This ancient sign speaks of the frailty and uncertainty of human life, and marks the penitence of this community” (Book of Common Worship, Presbyterian Church USA).

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Martin Connell is professor of theology at St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota.

Martin Connell, “Ash Wednesday: Meaning and History,” Liturgy 15, no. 1 (1998): 7–14.