Ash Wednesday: the Necessity and Salutary Effects of Penance
“For
what is your life? It is a vapor which appeareth for a little while, and
afterwards shall vanish away.” – St. James, iv, 10.
"In
the first centuries of Christianity, my dear children, great sinners, at least
those whose sins, having been committed publicly, had given bad example, were
condemned by the Church to perform a public penance more or less long and
severe, according to the importance of their sins.
At the beginning of Lent,
penitent went barefoot to the cathedral; there the Bishop exhorted them to
repent, after which, taking some dust and marking them on the forehead, he said
at the same time these words: “Remember, O man, that thou art dust, and unto
dust thou shalt return.” Then the Bishop turned the penitents out of church,
and they were not allowed to return thither until the time of the penance was
ended.
My
children, if we are now treated less severely, you must not conclude that our
sins have become more excusable, or that we are less obliged to atone for them;
though the Church now spares us the shame of public penance, we are none the less
obliged to do sincere and real penance in the depths of our hearts, and we
shall not cease to hear the necessity of penance preached during this holy
time.
In remembrance of this ancient custom, the Church, considering that all
her children are sinners as of old, has adopted this ceremony of the giving of
ashes on the first day of Lent, named accordingly Ash-Wednesday. The words
uttered by the Priest whilst he marks our foreheads with the ashes, remind us
that we must die some day, that it is good for us to think of our latter end,
so as to atone for the sins already committed and to avoid committing others.
These
serious thoughts can be of all the greater use to us at a time of the year,
which gives to many the opportunity of acting foolishly and of grievously
offending God in his goodness.
As for you, my dear children, during these day
of folly, I know that you amuse yourselves under your parent’s guidance and by
their leave; however, it may be needful to remind some of you, who too deeply
lament over the shortness of these days of pleasure, as, for instance little
girls, who perhaps at a party, have been rather vain of their beauty or of
their dress; I say merely to amuse
ourselves, and that our poor bodies, being made of dust and destined to fall
once more into dust, it is folly to be so very proud of them.
On Ash-Wednesday,
let us then ask God, my children, to cure us of our vanity."
Wishing all my readers a happy and blessed Ash-Wednesday and Lent! God bless you all!
In Christ,
Julie
