Remember your death: A history of Ash Wednesday and why any Christian can join in penitent humility

Millions of Christians around the world will observe Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Lenten season as the Church anticipates the coming of Easter – a practice any Christian, regardless of affiliation, can welcome.

Lent, derived from Old English root meaning “springtime,” honors the 40 days approaching the annual observance of Christ’s death and resurrection, according to OSV News. Canons from the Council of Nicaea, which gathered in 325 A.D. and produced the well-known Nicene Creed, referenced Lent and established a fixed date for Easter: the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox.

Additionally, the weeks of Lent marked a season of “catechesis, fasting and prayer” for candidates seeking baptism at Easter, Rev. Adam Rick, chaplain at Hillsdale College, told The Lion. Church members would fast and pray alongside these “baptismal candidates” in a spirit of “solidarity.” The same weeks also served as a reconciliation for “penitents,” who had been “barred from full fellowship in the church,” due to “public sins,” Rick explained.

The sign of ashes on the head – a common practice in Lenten services today – dates far earlier than the early church, to the practices of the Jewish people throughout Scripture.

“The application of ashes as a sign of penitence ultimately comes from the Old Testament,” Rick said. Ashes remind sinners of their origin from the dust, as in the words of Abraham: “Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes” (Gen. 18:27). Israelites would often adorn sackcloth and ashes to demonstrate great mourning, especially over their sins, as demonstrated by Job and Daniel, and referenced by Jesus.

The imposition of ashes is thus a heritage of all Christians, even those Protestant traditions that may be wary of rituals that can become empty and performative.

Yet that concern is also part of the tradition, according to Rick. For example, the ancient and medieval church’s gospel reading on Ash Wednesday repeats Christ’s warning to “not disfigure your face when you fast.”

“Jesus is concerned, after all, with our doing acts of piety to be seen by others, and not necessarily with the acts of piety in themselves, if the focus is Godward,” he explained. “Jesus is interested in the heart, and the actions which flow out of it. Acts of piety done in faith toward God can be quite beneficial.”

Many Protestant denominations have returned to the symbolism of ashes in Ash Wednesday services, part of what theologian Carl Trueman suggests marks a new thirst for liturgy and ritual in many modern churches.

Ashes or not, the service calls sinners to repent, to contemplate their sin and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross to cleanse them.

All churches should support the Christian freedom to choose to receive ashes, Rick said. Receiving ashes, with a proper humble heart posture, demonstrates “embodied ritual” in the unification of body and spirit, he explained.

“We have bodies, and we absolutely should make use of them in worship, so far as our hearts are properly and humbly examined in the process,” he said. “The embodiment of penitence can, indeed, even help carry the heart along.”

Bowing the head to receive ashes is an outward presentation of a humble spirit, recognizing the need for Christ’s salvation: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness,” writes the Apostle Peter. “By his wounds you have been healed.”

“This is the paradox at the heart of our faith,” said Chosen actor Jonathan Roumie in a recent Lent video. “Life comes through death. Every act of humility, every moment of surrender, is a kind of dying, a kind of falling to the ground, falling into the soil of God’s mercy, so that from that death something new might grow.”

Christians are called to empty themselves to dedicate their lives to the service of God, to remember their death.

For dust you are, and to dust shall you return.