prepasration of ashes for imposition ash wednesday

Otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.Īs the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streetsĭo not let your left hand know what your right is doing,Īnd your Father who sees in secret will repay you. 'Take care not to perform righteous deeds We appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.Īnd on the day of salvation I helped you.

So that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.įor our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, In the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense. Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness (see 3a) Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned. Then the LORD was stirred to concern for his land Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep, Make us receptive to your word and your life We express our willingness to be converted when, after the gospel, we receive the ashes. The way is conversion, repentance, summed up in today’s gospel as almsgiving, that is, caring for people as praying, that is, listening to God’s word and giving it a response of love and commitment and as fasting, that is, giving up our selfishness. This means that we are called with him to suffer and die to ourselves, to sin and to give up the evil in and around us, so that we can rise, individually and as a community, to a deeper Christian life, become more available to God and to people, and capable of rendering service with love. We are called to go up with Christ to Jerusalem, the place where he will suffer and die before he will rise in glory. It is a “favorable time,” a season of grace. Who am I and what am I living for? Am I living for God and the community? We shall be invited to receive ashes on our foreheads with the invitation, “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.” Away, then, with all masks and return to God, to your true self and to one another as God’s people.

In this holy season we reflect on the true meaning of our lives. But today Lent begins, the time to put off our masks and to turn our face and heart to God and to people. In many regions of the world people celebrate carnival in the days before Lent with much noise and merrymaking. The penitential rite is omitted, since the rite of the ashes is a rite of penance and conversion. We express our brokenness and our readiness to change when, after the gospel, we receive the ashes. Now is the right time to return to God and to turn to the people around us.

In many ways we have tried to be our own gods, to decide for ourselves what is right or wrong, and we have ended up by making ourselves the center of the world at the expense of ourselves, of God, of our neighbor. Why these forty days of penance? To return to our roots - to God, to our better selves - and consequently also to our neighbor. Today we begin our forty days of Lent, forty days of preparation for Easter.

Prepasration of ashes for imposition ash wednesday