Question first
appeared on March 14, 2004
Why don’t we celebrate Ash
Wednesday?
Ash
Wednesday is a practice of Western Christianity.
It was never practiced in the Christian East, the home of Eastern
Orthodoxy.
Ash
Wednesday is only one of the differences of the Lenten cycle preceding
the Feast of Easter or Pascha (Passover), as it is known by the
Orthodox. Great Lent in the
West is forty days in length, beginning at Ash Wednesday and ending on
Holy Saturday, the day before Easter.
Sundays are omitted in this calculation and are not considered
days of fasting, such that the number of fasting days is forty.
In
the Eastern Christian tradition, Great Lent begins at sundown on the
evening of Cheese Fare or Forgiveness Sunday with the celebration of
Forgiveness Vespers. It is
forty days in length ending on the Friday before Lazarus Saturday.
All days, including Sundays, are included in the fast.
Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday plus Holy Week are not part of
Great Lent but are an additional eight days of fasting before the
celebration of Pascha.
Considering
the western practice of Ash Wednesday, Dom Gregory Dix in his classic
work, “The Shape of the Liturgy,” writes, “It was not until
the later seventh century that the full total of forty days of actual
fasting (Sundays not being included) began to be observed at Rome by the
addition of Ash Wednesday...The moving ceremony of the imposition of
ashes on the brows of the faithful beginning their Lenten fast,
accompanied by the words, ‘Remember, man, that dust thou art and unto
dust shalt thou return,’ from which Ash Wednesday gets its name, is
not a ‘Roman’ ceremony at all. It
seems to have originated in
Gaul
in the sixth century, and was at first
confined to public penitents doing penance for grave and notorious sin,
whom the clergy tried to comfort and encourage by submitting themselves
to the same public humiliation. It
spread to
England
and to
Rome
in the ninth or tenth century, and
thence to
Germany
,
Southern Italy
and
Spain
.”
As
moving as Ash Wednesday may seem in its symbolism, Eastern Orthodox
wonder how it reconciles with these words of our Lord Jesus Christ:
“Moreover, when you fast, do
not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure
their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say
to you, they have their reward. But
you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do
not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the
secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you
openly.” (Matt. 6:16-18)
©Very
Rev. Fr. Olof Scott, Sunday Bulletin, March 14, 2004
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