Stuff Catholics Like

There are those Catholics who check in for services on Christmas and Easter twice a year and pretend they’re visiting from out of town. Then there are those Catholics who choose to go the extra mile and attend Mass on Ash Wednesday, thus increasing their holiness by nearly 50%. It is a not-so-subtle way of proving you’ve been to Mass and works better than showing off a Sunday bulletin.

The use of ash is a “delible” sign of our mortality and the dust that we shall return to. The tradition that man is dust stretches way back to Adam, who, like Flint Marko, was actually was made out of dust, and to Abraham who interceded for Sodom and prayed, “Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.” Of course the joyful prophets and other fun Old Testament characters like Job and Mordecai used ashes and sackcloth in their daily devotions. While Jeremiah and Ezekiel were wallowing in ash, the even more penitential King David says in Psalm 102 that he ate ash like it was bread. No doubt he was using a Hamilton Beach toaster.

The solemn use of ash was also popular in the early church and was used to mark those who had been temporarily excommunicated for committing serious sins. By the 7^th century the practice had become associated with the first day of Lent. Sinners would confess their sins privately to a bishop and then be enrolled in the ranks of the penitents for public absolution. Wearing ash and sackcloth, these people would be expelled from the community like Adam and Eve from the garden, and their penance and abstinence would last the forty days of lent.

Modern Catholics believe that cleanliness is next to godliness and that dressing well honors our bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. Needless to say, wearing potato sacks and dumping ash on our heads at the doors of our parish for forty days is seldom seen these days. What we have retained is the practice of marking our foreheads with ash made from the burned palms of the previous Passion Sunday. Some delicate people prefer to receive the ash from a woman with small fingers while the more zealous beeline for the man with the giant thumb. At one local parish the priest beams when he gives ash to bald men. To him it means a bigger forehead and he uses the whole canvas.

In Mexico City the Faithful are so enthusiastic (and numerous) that the inventive Franciscans had to develop a new way of distributing ashes to shorten the service. They mix the ash with a measure of holy oil to make it more paste-like and less dusty. Then they have 6-8 people stand side-by-side while they stamp their foreheads with a special tool. This stamp is not available from any church goods supplier and it is rumored that each Friar must build his own as a rite of passage, like a Jedi builds his lightsaber. An experienced priest can stamp up to 10 heads while saying the words from Genesis, “Recuerda, hombre, que eres ceniza y en ceniza te convertirás”.

The New Testament tells us to not to look dismal when we fast and to wash our faces so that our sacrifices are known by God and not by men. If it is hard to reconcile ash and sackcloth with Matthew 16 then perhaps it is time go shopping. You could always try Sak’s Fifth Ave where they specialize in the latest in Catholic penitential fashion, like this classy sack cloth halter top.

Guest post by James Rutherford, General Manager for Aquinas and More Catholic Goods.