BY FR. LARRY RICE

For centuries, Catholic Christians have marked the beginning of the season of Lent by receiving ash on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. This tradition has its roots in the Old Testament, where wearing ashes was a common sign of repentance for sins, and a sign of one’s humility before God. Since Lent is a season of penitential renewal through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, it’s appropriate that this ancient sign marks the beginning of the season.

The ashes themselves are usually made by burning the palm fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday. This symbolically connects the beginning of Lent with its end, connecting our change of heart with Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection.

Ashes are usually distributed as part of the Mass on Ash Wednesday, often after the homily. As people approach the priest or other minister, he presses the ashes to their foreheads, and speaks one of two phrases: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” or “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”

In many places, Ash Wednesday services are among the most popular of the whole year—a day that’s not even a Holy Day of Obligation. Cynics have suggested that this is because people “get” something, as they do on Palm Sunday. But there’s nothing particularly appealing about getting smudged with ashes. Perhaps, the appeal is the expression through a physical sign of a desire for interior conversion.

The Gospel for Ash Wednesday is a reminder that the real purpose of the season of Lent isn’t to make public demonstrations of piety—even the wearing of ashes—but to seek conversion of heart.

The Lenten season is a time of preparation for the liturgical celebration of the suffering, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. Many Catholics spend that time on the three practices of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It is also a time to participate in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.

The season of Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday until the evening of Holy Thursday. If Sundays are excluded from the count, the season lasts forty days. The forty-day length of Lent is rooted in the biblical usage of the number forty. Forty is typically indicative of a time of testing, trial, penance, purification, and renewal. In the New Testament, forty days is the length of Jesus’ time of trial in the desert in preparation for his public ministry, proclaiming the Gospel.

Mark 1:12-15

The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him. After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand.

The forty-day period of Jesus’ trial in the desert echoes a number of events in the Old Testament:

• The face of the earth was cleansed and purified during the promised period of days and nights that rain poured down during the great flood—”I will bring rain down on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and so I will wipe out from the surface of the earth every moving creature that I have made” (Gen 7:4).
• The face of the earth was renewed during a fortyday period after the mountain tops appeared and the waters of the great flood receded—“The tops of the mountains appeared. At the end of forty days Noah opened the hatch of the ark that he had made” (Gen 8:5-6).
• Moses spent forty years as a shepherd in the desert before God called him to lead the Israelites out of slavery—“Moses fled when he heard this and settled as an alien in the land of Midian . . . Forty years later, an angel appeared to him in the desert near Mount Sinai in the flame of a burning bush” (Acts 7: 29-30).
• Moses fasted for forty days and nights on Mount Sinai before receiving the tablets of the covenant—“So Moses stayed there with the Lord for forty days and forty nights, without eating any food or drinking any water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments” (Ex 34:28).
• The Israelites spent forty years wandering in the desert, as a time of testing, trial and purification of the people, before reaching the Promised Land—“Now the Israelites had wandered forty years in the desert, until all the warriors among the people that came forth from Egypt died off because they had not obeyed the command of the Lord” (Jos 5:6; see Num 32:13).
• The prophet Elijah spent forty days in the desert before encountering God on Mount Horeb—“[Elijah] got up, ate and drank; then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb” (1 Kgs 19:8).
• The Ninevites were given forty days before God was going to destroy the city, allowing time for repentance and conversion—“Jonah began his journey through the city, and had gone but a single day’s walk announcing, ‘Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,’ when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth” (Jon 3:4-5).