Ash Wednesday: þu eart dust and to duste gewendst
This edition looks forward to Ash Wednesday and includes resources you could use for the incoming penitential season. Our lesser spotted Saint is St Finan. Welcome!
What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.
The bit of text above is found at the beginning of the Book of Joel - prophesying about the imminent and ominous coming Day of the Lord. This bit of prose, attractive in construction, but terrifying in reality, is probably about a foreign army that God was going to use to judge his people for their sinful ways. This theme of judgement runs throughout the Old Testament and yet we also find a parallel theme running beside all such prophesies - we find the way back, God revealing His mercy. It is from the book of Joel that St Peter in his first sermon tells the crowds of the pouring out of the Spirit saying:
Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.
The Book of Joel was prophesying the new age Jesus Christ was to inaugurate and it is also from Joel, chapter 2, that the Church takes the first reading for Ash Wednesday:
Yet even now, declares the Lord,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
Ash Wednesday is a call for repentance, mourning at how we have strayed from our God and reflecting on His grandeur and holiness. When the Priest (in normal years) lays on our foreheads the Ashes (or in Europe sprinkled on the crown of people’s head) we are signalling that we identify with the lowliest of all things - ash or dust. In the OT people might throw dust on themselves as signs of repentance. The dust of roads and paths made inert and dried out then stood on and carried by the bottom of people’s shoe. This image is what is impressed on us when in the Mass the Priest says- ‘Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.’ It is also the great leveller - no matter our riches, success or whatever barometer we use, we are all the same, we are all dust.
The ashes used come from the ‘palms’ we have kept all year and then taken by the Priests to burn. These palms laid at the feet of our Lord as He entered Jerusalem were to signify peace and victory - but not as those crowds expected - Jesus was to accomplish victory over sin and death and bring peace with God through his own violent death. The days of Palm Sunday and Ash Wednesday complement one another for as the ashes are imposed on us they blaze with victory and peace, in the dust of our repentance God lifts our heads to reveal mercy bursting into life. For our God is jealous for us and rich in mercy, bountiful in grace. He always provides a way back, no matter what.
In researching for Ash Wednesday I came across the poem, Nondum, by Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ. Written in 1866 for Lent, it begins with the melancholic verse found in Isaiah 45 - Truly, you are a God who hides himself. Lent done without grace in view can seem, as Hopkins wrote: To Thee the trembling sinner prays /But no forgiving voice replies. Hopkins wanders the desert with the Israelites and moves ‘along life's tomb-decked way’ and then finally, as if he could not bear the burden any longer cries out to that which is beyond, for patience and dissolution of his doubt. He ends with sublime verse:
Speak! whisper to my watching heart
One word — as when a mother speaks
Soft, when she sees her infant start,
Till dimpled joy steals o'er its cheeks.
Then, to behold Thee as Thou art,
I'll wait till morn eternal breaks.
The season of lent, starting on Wednesday is a call to repentance, fasting and alms-giving - we identify with the lowly, repent of our sins, and await the great day of the Lord. This time without trepidation, but with hope and joy. As St John Paul II said; we are a Sunday people.
Eric Hanna | Nairn
Ash Wednesday: St Aelfric, the tenth century Anglo-Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury gives us a glimpse into Ash Wednesday at that time with his wonderful sermon. The site it sits on is a bit of a treasure trove and I love it!
The Seven Penitential Psalms: It is customary to pray and reflect on the Penitential Psalms through Lent. The USCCB has provided audio versions and a reflection on each.
Ash Wednesday and Lent will not be the same as usual this year, but there are many things we can be involved in. Below is just a selection of a few I have seen. Also next week I will enclose a number of book recommendations for your Spiritual reading over Lent, those contributing include Fr Martin of Pluscarden Abbey, and a few other friends of the Coracle.
St Augustines in Coatbridge is providing a free Lent book, home Ash Wednesday kit and Stations of the Cross. Go to their website to order. Go here to order.
The Bishops Council of Scotland has also provided an Ash Wednesday at Home Kit. See here.
If your a Twitter user you can join in with Elena here. Elena is one of our writers and you will find her work on the roughbounds media website.
For more details go to www.magdala.org/pilgrimage-in-faith. The timetable (taken from their website) is as follows:
Monday February 15th and Tuesday February 16th: Introductory videos with the English language Pilgrim leaders Kathleen Nichols and Fr. Eamon Kelly, LC
Ash Wednesday, February 17th: Day one of the ‘Pilgrimage In Faith.’
February 18th – Sunday April 4th: the ‘Pilgrimage In Faith’ continues each day through the 40 days of Lent, and Holy Week, culminating with the solemn Easter Vigil Mass.
Easter Sunday, April 4th: Concluding activity and reflection of the ‘Pilgrimage In Faith’.
The Bible and The Mass from the St Paul Centre.
For more information go to the St Paul Centre Website here.
St Finan, Feast Day 17th Febraury, 661 AD
St Finan (or Finnan) was an Irish monk who trained under the great St Columba at Iona Abbey. The image below is from Catholic Online.
St Finan was known as prudent, zealous for prayer and for following Gods will no matter what. He followed the model of all holy Bishops with his love of poverty, disdain for the world and a zeal to preach the gospel. When St Aiden of Lindisfarne died, St Finan became his successor and second Bishop of that Isle. In his time there he enjoyed positive relations with the King of Northumbria and had the delight of welcoming two other nearby Kings into the Catholic faith - King Siegbert of the East Saxons and King Peada of the Mercians. These conversions lead to missionaries being received into their respective Kingdoms. Saint Finan was also involved in the controversy surrounding the dating of Easter. Prior to the 7th Century the British/ Irish Church had followed a different dating to that of Rome. Evidence suggests he was open to the dates suggested by Rome but as it had not come down definitively at that time on a date he continued with the tradition already present in the British and Irish Churches. St Finan died ten years after becoming Bishop at Lindisfarne and was laid to rest next to St Aiden.