Gelasian Sacramentary

I associated Ash Wednesday with Catholics in my childhood years. Receiving ashes on the forehead, giving up things for Lent, and refraining from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays were things only Catholics did. Silly me! Ashes have long been used as signs of humility and repentance in Scripture (Esther 4.1, 3; Job 2.8; Daniel 9.3; Jonah 3.6). Jesus inaugurated his public ministry with forty days of fasting and prayer. The first evidence of a forty-day Lenten period appeared in print shortly after the Council of Nicea in AD 325. Our first written reference to Ash Wednesday dates to an eighth century worship aid called the Gelasian Sacramentary.
The Protestant church I served decided a few years ago to reconstitute its Ash Wednesday service with the imposition of ashes. Catholics in my family took notice. There I was, dipping my thumb into a bowl of ashes and making the sign of the cross on worshipers’ foreheads, pronouncing the words, “Remember, you are dust, and to dust you will return.” The phrase recalls what God said to Adam in the garden, “for dust you are and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3.19). Telling several hundred people they are going to die messed with my mind. It was particularly unsettling to speak these words to young children. Ashes are a jarring reminder of our mortality and the fate of our earthly bodies. But Lent also gives way to Easter. Ashes symbolize not only death and repentance but also remind us we are God’s redeemed people. Jesus triumphed over the grave and raises believers to eternal life. We begin this Lenten season with a prayer from the Gelasian Sacramentary: