Prof. Matthew UMUKORO

 

Why Ash Wednesday? But, why not? “Dust thou art; and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19). This capital sentence was first pronounced by God himself on Adam and Eve after committing the first sin of disobedience in the Garden of Eden, a curse later inherited for eternity by humanity.  The only way out for the individual is through baptism as demonstrated much later by Jesus Christ himself. So, from the moment man lost the glory and beauty of Eden, they became guilty of death, and a return to the dust from which they had come.

        Therefore, although the term “Ash Wednesday” does not precisely feature in the Bible, images of death, and the metaphor of sackcloth and ashes, occur again and again throughout the Holy Book. The sackcloth is a garment worn to signify mourning, repentance, or deep remorse, for the grave and suicidal sin of disobedience by our first parents for which we all stand guilty.

During the dialogue between God and Abraham over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham declared: “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes” (Gen.18:27). Also, in the Book of Joel (Chapter 2:12-13), the Lord calls for a return to him with fasting and weeping ahead of the Second Coming, saying: “… turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.” In the same vein, Daniel pleads to God on behalf of all Israel, ahead of the expected Messiah, “with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes” (Daniel, 9:3).

In his moment of affliction, Job similarly repents “in dust and ashes” (Job, 42:6). In the Book of Esther (4:1-2), when the king threatens to wipe out the Jews because of Mordecai’s intransigence, Mordecai “rent his clothes, and put on sackcloth with ashes…and cried with a loud and a bitter cry” boldly approaching the king’s gate in that appearance of grief and mortification. References of call to repentance can also be found in the New Testament.

        So, why Ash Wednesday? Because “all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). And “the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). It always falls on a Wednesday because it has to be 40 days of fasting, following the example of Christ, and this is calculated backwards from Easter, excluding Sundays, which are supposed to be days of feasting in moderation, as a respite from the rigours of  the fasting period.  Historically, Pope Gregory I established this Wednesday principle in the early 7th century to ensure that the period coincides with Easter. It is a period when the faithful recollect the ordeal that Christ had to endure for our sake, and to have a token experience of it through fasting and symbolically walking the way of the Cross. Ashes are symbols of mortification and repentance, in consonance with the sombre atmosphere of the fasting mood. This is the brief background to the concept of Ash Wednesday.

        The Ash Wednesday ritual comprises five activities: fasting, praying, refraining from sin, participating in the Stations of the Cross, and donations of the proceeds from the fasting to the poor. Fasting is the most rigorous part which must be undertaken with discretion and absolute sincerity.

First, it must be done discreetly without making it so obvious; second, it must be made to conform to individual capacity, without any form of pretence or self-deception. Not everybody has the capacity to go the full duration of forty days, or go the full day until evening before breaking the fast. If twenty days is all you can conveniently make, so be it! The fast is meant to be one full meal per day, which may be honestly broken into two parts without making it to look like two full meals. For instance, a loaf of bread may be cut into two equal parts and taken twice with half a cup of tea each time. Also, if your endurance capacity is half a day, do not force yourself to go a full day and become irritable or aggressive as a result. Fast within your natural capacity, but with absolute dedication.

 Furthermore, avoid elaborate breaking of fast which would amount to two or three meals in one. That is an exercise in futility and self-deception. It is better not to fast at all than to pretend to be fasting, which amounts to a sin in itself. Honesty and sincerity are the keywords. If you are truly fasting, you are supposed to save two-thirds of your normal daily budget for feeding which should be passed on to the poor. The moment you are spending more money per day on feeding, then you know you are not fasting, but merely deceiving yourself. True fasting is supposed to yield substantial saving.

Also, the sick, the indigent, the aged, and the under-aged, are automatically exempted from fasting. The poor who only manage to eat once a day are already on compulsory fasting, and should not endanger their health.

        The one thing that is mandatory for all during Lent, regardless of age, financial status, or health condition, is fasting from sin, coupled with avoiding an ostentatious lifestyle. Every faithful Christian should make a conscious effort to keep away from all sins, most especially the habitual ones that have been confessed over and over again. One’s baggage of sins is expected to get lighter from one Lenten season to another, and thus get progressively reduced to the barest minimum over time. One who backslides after every Lenten season has simply wasted another golden opportunity to reform and become a better person.

        Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent when the faithful remorsefully embark on the necessary process of re-examination, reawakening, reconciliation, rejuvenation, and rebirth, for a stronger relationship with Jesus Christ, who paid the supreme sacrifice for our redemption. It was the greatest demonstration of love to endure unspeakable torture and die for an absolutely unworthy humanity at the peak of their sinfulness and vain self-glorification. It was the most ironical twist of fate that God sent his only begotten son to perform the needed act of painful sacrifice to atone for our wilful rebellion against him, in order to receive us back into eternal salvation. Somebody had to pay the price of our great transgressions against God, and Jesus Christ did at the hands of his persecutors who were not even aware of what they were doing until the dawn of the glorious resurrection. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing” (Luke 23:34), the dying Jesus prayed on the cross, as Holy Mary watched helplessly on in great agony, for the unspeakable torture being meted out on her innocent son, who had to die for the guilty.

Yes, Ash Wednesday is when we embark upon the process of atonement, to prepare ourselves, body, mind, and soul, to receive the eternal gift of the empty tomb, confirming the ultimate conquest of death, our death.   Ash Wednesday is the gateway towards the annual ritual of self-discovery, when we acknowledge that we are mere dust, and to dust shall we return. It is an obligatory process of self-redemption, which compels the full participation of all those who seek eternal life. If you missed out on the last one, can you afford to miss out on the next? That is a question for each and everyone of us to ponder over in our minds.