With the Ash Wednesday begins the Lentthe period preceding Easter, and is the day of fasting and abstinence from meat, abstention that the Church requires for every Friday of the year but which in recent decades has been reduced to only Friday of Lent.
The other day of fasting and foreseen abstinence is the Good Friday.
«Memento homo, quia pulvis es et by pulverem reverteris», that is: «Remember man, that dust six and dust will return». These words appear in Genesis 3.19 when God, after the original sin, chasing Adam from the garden of Eden condemns him to the effort of work and to death: «With the sweat of the forehead you will eat bread; As long as you return to the earth, because you have been taken from it: dust you are and in dust you will return! ».
This sentence was recited on the day of the ashes when the priest imposed the ashes – obtained by burning the blessed olive branches on the Palm Sunday of the previous year – to the faithful. After the liturgical reform, followed by the Second Vatican Council, the phrase was changed with the phrase: «Convert and believe in the Gospel»(Mk 1,15) which expresses, in addition to the penitential one, the positive aspect of Lent which is a time for conversion, assiduous prayer and return to God.
the origin of this celebration
The celebration of the ashes was born due to the public celebration of penance, in fact it constituted the rite that began the path of penance of the faithful who would be acquitted of their sins on the morning of Holy Thursday. From a liturgical point of view, The ashes can be imposed in all the Eucharistic celebrations of Wednesday But, the liturgists warn, it is advisable to indicate a “privileged” community celebration in which the ecclesial dimension of the path of conversion that is starting to be started.
Fasting is important for all religions: Muslims celebrate the month of Ramadanthe Jews the kippur and Christians the Lent.
The difference with the Ambrosian rite
Unlike the Roman rite, In the Ambrosian one (which is celebrated in the diocese of Millano) there is no ritual of Ash Wednesday. «The Ambrosian tradition has never known this day, but has always rigorously started the Lent period with the Sunday that introduces Lent, in fact, in fact, in squares squaresimae“Explained Monsignor Claudio Magnoli, head of the service for the liturgical pastoral care of the diocese.
Pope Francis imposes the ashes during the celebration in the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome (Ansa)
What is the biblical meaning of the sign of ashes?
Biblical theology reveals a double meaning of the use of ashes:
1. First of all I am sign of the weak and fragile condition of man. Abraham addressing God he says: “See how I dare to speak to my Lord, I who are dust and ashes …” (Gen 18:27). Job recognizing the profound limit of his existence, with a sense of extreme prostration, he says: “He threw me into the mud: I became dust and ash” (GB 30:19). In many other biblical steps this precarious dimension of man symbolized by ash (SAP 2,3; Sir 10.9; Sir 17,27) can be found.
2. But the ash is also the external sign of the one who regrets his evil acting and decides to make a renewed journey towards the Lord. Particularly well known is the biblical text of the conversion of the inhabitants of Nineveh because of the preaching of Jonah: “The citizens of Nineive believed to God and banned a fast, dressed the sack, from the greatest to the smallest. Having come the news to the king of Nineveh, he got up from the throne, took off his mantle, covered herself with a sack and sat on the ashes” (Thu 3.5-9). Giuditta also invites all the people to make penance so that God intervene to free him: “Every Israelite man or woman and the children who lived in Jerusalem prostrate themselves in front of the temple and sprinkled the head of ashes and, dressed in the bag, raised their hands in front of the Lord” (GDT 4:11).
