Ashes

It is a custom that stems all the way back into the Old Testament Scriptures. I’m speaking, or course, of using ashes as an outward sign of one’s inward repentance over sin. Job repented “in dust and ashes” (42:6). The prophet Daniel made his request to the Lord God “by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes” (9:3). Even Christ connects ashes with repentance as He condemns those who refused to believe in Him: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes” (Matthew 11:21).

Why ashes? Because ashes remind us of death. And death is the consequence of our sin (Romans 6:23). Remember the curse pronounced by the LORD God upon Adam and Eve after their fall into sin? “You [shall] return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19; cf. Ecclesiastes 3:20). Like Adam and Eve, we too are sinners who will one day return to the ground in death: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

Recognizing the Scriptural connection described above, many Christian churches throughout the centuries have used ashes on Ash Wednesday as an outward reminder of a necessary inward reality—repentance of sins and faith in Christ’s forgiveness. Here at Divine Shepherd we offer the imposition of ashes at the beginning of our solemn Divine Service on Ash Wednesday to all the baptized who desire to receive it.

In addition to being an outward reminder of our sinfulness and mortality, the ashes placed on our forehead in the shape of a cross on Ash Wednesday also beg us to remember that our only hope rests in Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for our sin on the cross. He died that we might live. He became sin for us, that we become holy and righteous in Him!

As is evident, Ash Wednesday is a day like no other. It is a somber day, to be sure. For ashes rightfully remind us of our sinfulness, our mortality. But Ash Wednesday is also a hope-filled day, a day in which the most blessed symbol of our faith—the cross of Jesus—in placed squarely on our forehead again, just as it was in Holy Baptism, reminding us of God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness in Christ our Lord.

A blessed Ash Wednesday!