Beloved in Christ,
Greetings to you all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In February we are entering another Lent season. We start the Lent on Ash Wednesday. In the Bible ashes were always associated with humility and mortality, fasting and remorse. If anybody has sinned against God and they felt remorse about that sin and were repenting of that sin, then some times, in the Bible, we see that they sprinkles ashes on their head as a sign of sorrow and repentance. Ashes were supposed to remind you that you are mortal and eventually will become ashes after you die. We were only ashes and we need to repent of our sins now, while God gives us a time of grace.
During 6th or 7th centuries, Christian Churches thought about this idea. People, in private, at times, would sprinkle ashes on themselves as a sign of repentance. Eventually this became a public practice. Instead of sprinkling ashes on the head, the ashes would be rubbed onto the forehead in the shape of a cross. It was a sign of repentance and a reminder of your baptism, when the sign of the cross was put on you with water and prayers. The ashes would actually be collected by burning the palm branches of the Palm Sunday of the year before.
Some churches even today have retained this practice, while others left this practice. In our church we don’t carry out this practice at the present time, but we don’t believe that there is anything wrong in it. It can be actually quite valuable for those who are doing it for the right reasons. What is really important, though, it is not whether you have ashes on your forehead, but what is important is what is going on in your heart and what is going on in your soul.
For every Christian, ashes or not, Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the somber season of Lent. Lent is a forty day span of time from now until Easter. During this time, we focus on Christ’s battle with sin and Satan that He waged in order to win salvation for us. The forty days of Lent do not include Sundays, because each Sunday is considered as a “ miniature Easter”, a time of joy and celebration of Christ’s resurrection. During Lent, though, even on Sundays, we will be meditating about the battle that Christ fought for us on our behalf.
May God bless you all
Yours in Christ,
Rev. C. C. Sabu
