Maybe it's time to consider Protestantism?
I don't see more than 1 person a year with the ashes on their forehead anymore now that I'm immersed in the culture of scientists. I completely forgot that this was Holy Week at all.
Drat, there goes my plan to actually go to church this weekend. I don't want to look like an Easter-only poser. Next weekend is off too, because I don't want to look like the guy who forgot about Easter entirely and then felt guilty.
I forgot all about today being Ash Wednesday. Led to a bit of an awkward moment this morning.
Is this a post about cricket or what?
Poser? An Easter-only believer is still a believer; forget about how you'll look. Now that I'm a Jew, I miss hearing the Easter Sunday hymn Jesus Christ is Risen Today! Halleluyah! Loved the arpeggio when I was knee-high.
This Muslim had quite a shock on his first Ash Wednesday at a Jesuit school. It was like walking around inside a zombie movie.
9. Why not? In the future all disputes between the USA and Iran will be settled by the best of three 50 over One Day Internationals. The umpires will be appointed by the Vatican.
2. Ned, Holy Week is not for another 35 days. You think you would remember Ash Wednesday because of all the boobies on Mardi Gras, for crying out loud.
Holy Week is not for another 35 days
Yes, you're right.
boobies on Mardi Gras
Certainly not here.
15. Well, did you have any beads to throw? Cuz, I think that's required.
There's no need for an elaborate pretext to show us your boobs, TLL. Just go for it.
I'm a backsliding/sporadically practicing R.C. and I've always thought the ashes were show-offy. I mean, what's next? Stigmata?
We've been over the boobs for beads rules before.
Sign of Catholic guilt: no ashes, but still not eating meat.
17. Sorry RMP, one must observe the proprieties, or the result is anarchy. As proof, I offer any Girls Gone Wild video.
19: Wow, I never knew the bead thing used to be based on one-on-one encounters rather than public exhibitionism. That sounds a lot more awkward.
Wait, Cala, you do the hard part but not the easy showoff part? Suddenly, it all makes sense.
23 - One-on-one encounters in the middle of Bourbon Street but yes.
21: But Girls Gone Wild is throwing t-shirts, so you're really talking about a pretty slight doctrinal difference here. Splitter.
Burgers at my house tonight? Or leftover burgers on Friday?
put there by someone or something
That would be God.
Of course GGW has cheapened the whole thing, but shouldn't "old school" still be a viable option, given its inherent semi-privacy, between respectable people?
I had no idea the ashes on the forhead thing existed until freshman year of college. My was I ever confused.
Just chiming in to say I have a "hey you've got some shit on your face" story too. We don't have a lot of Catholics in North Carolina, so when I got to New York the first Ash Wednesday really threw me. It took me all day to figure out what was going on.
19: I love that the post below that one in the archive is titled "I'm writing to you while bare-chested again."
The first time I ever really noticed the ashes on the forehead thing I was about twenty-three and the Catholic in question was a professor of mine. And this is after living in France for two years.
I have never in my 38 years seen a person with ashes on their forehead except on television.
Ceremonially, that is. I know a lot of smokers.
Oh, is today Ash Wednesday? Huh.
Apo, you need to get out of the south more often.
I get out of the South plenty. Just not at the right time, apparently.
My parents' church, way up the mountain, used to do an Ash Wednesday service complete with ashes on the forehead as a kind of "hey, it's almost like being diverse" thing but everyone would just go home and wash them off.
It doesn't matter how often he gets out of the south, he'd have to do so on Ash Wednesday, and February sounds like a particularly poor time of year to leave the south.
My wife's family is Catholic (and there's a busload of them). Most of them are practicing, even, and one set of four kids is in a Catholic school in Raleigh. I wonder if any of them are wearing ashes on their foreheads? I should ask.
So, practicing Catholics in the house, are you allowed to wash the ashes off the next day? What are the rules about that?
Not if you've given up bathing for Lent.
I presume that the more High-Church Episcopalians, and possibly some Lutherans as well, have a service for this. Lent was a liturgical season when I was growing up in Protestant churches, but before Palm Sunday there weren't many personal observances.
Not if you've given up bathing for Lent.
Does this happen?
My parents are United Methodists and the whole thing had a sort of "we don't really believe this but there's no harm in experimenting" vibe.
What's the experiment...to see if the holy ash would burn through their skin?
This is a very interesting thread and I have a lot I'd very much like to say, but unfortunately I've given up unfogged for lent.
Am I the only one here with ashes on their forehead right now?
1, 43: Yep, apparently Episcopalians do the whole ash thing, too. I know this because I got my ashes today at lunch in an Episcopal church in Raleigh. In the South!
BG might have, when/if she checks in.
44: Hey, why not? It'll keep all you heathen fuckers away from me.
I was raised Catholic, always got ashes on Ash Wednesday, and now I'm worshiping in the Episcopal faith. Which, like I said above, also has the ashes.
Despite all this, I've always found the ashes a bit confusing. Especially today, when one of the readings at today's noon service was Matthew 6:1-6, and 16-21. You know, the part where Jesus says, "Hey, don't be too showy with this whole religion thing. Don't be like the hypocrites, praying loudly down at the synagogue or in the middle of the street where everybody can see. You ought to be praying on the down low, in secret, so only God knows what's up."
Or something like that, I'm paraphrasing.
Anyway, the response of both the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches is the same -- that these ashes are the mark we bear as believers of the sign of the cross. They are the ashes gleaned from the burnt palms from the previous Palm Sunday, and they represent our mortality, our sin, and our utter dependence upon God for pardon and absolution.
Or something like that.
So that's my take on the whole ashes thing. I get why we do it, but it still seems a little showy to me. Nonetheless, I still do it.
In other words, I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.
46: They're Protestants and this is a largely Catholic practice. So, yes, that's pretty much the experiment. Would it burn through their skin? Would they wake up cursed to speak only Latin? Would the Pope show up and spank them for washing it off? Only one way to find out: science.
Ok, NCProsecutor, since you have ashes on your forehead right now, when do you wash them off? Tomorrow? Is there any sort of thingumabob that you do before washing them off?
52: You have the lesson all wrong. To paraphrase:
"Act like you are praying down low, in private, but make sure everyone sees you doing it with humility."
Seems to have been a lot of that in recent years. I went to Presbyterian services with my mom about 10 years ago to find cassocks (green!) and candle-snuffing going on.
So, practicing Catholics in the house, are you allowed to wash the ashes off the next day?
Yup. They're not magic, just symbolic. And the weirdest thing about being in graduate school is that this is one of the first times in my life where everyone isn't running around with ashes on their head on Ash Wednesday.
54: No special doohickie I'm supposed to do. Just, you know, wash my face like I normally would at night before sleepy-time.
And since the ashes are a symbol of repentance and sin and all that, it's not showy-offy like praying aloud would be. More like old traditions of wearing black while in mourning.
Speaking of giving things up for Lent, I decided that I wanted to give up caffeinated beverages and my fiancee decided she wanted to give up french fries. So for some perverse reason, we've decided to give up both.
Luckily for me, this doesn't exclude chicken wings and beer. Woo hoo!
Thanks, intertronic Catholics! I've always wondered about that.
54: They're surprisingly short-lived - I was never aware of washing them off, but they were never there the next day. Although for a couple of all-nighters in college they had more staying power.
In college my (virgin) friends once debated whether giving up sex for Lent was legitimate, or whether it was an unjust imposition on one's spouse (or hypothetical girlfriend.)
Was the result inconclusive, or did one side prevail?
62.--I bet you could get the ashes to stay longer if you applied a fixative, like hair spray.
You can listen to TS Eliot reading Ash Wednesday here. One of the only poems I ever bothered to memorize (the first section, anyway).
I've gone from strict observance of the liturgical calendar (as a choral singer) to jack-Catholic occasional attendance, but I still feel a little naked without the smudge today. The priest's incantation -- "Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return" -- is one of the Church's better lines.
JM, there's no ceremony involved in washing off the ashes. Still wearing them on Thursday signals only that you haven't bathed.
63. I think it would not be legitimate unless both parties agreed. Anyway, on Easter you would know what he would be knocking with.
Do certain Catholic cultures practice the Ash Wednesday ceremony more than others? Because I grew up in an area with lots of Catholics -- Latinos and Filipinos, mostly -- and I don't think I ever saw a person with ashes on their head. In fact, the very first time was when I was in law school, in a town that had a lot of Italians and Irish. I had no idea what it was about. It was a pretty freaky sight.
The result was that it was something a couple could choose to do together, but shouldn't be the sort of thing unilaterally decided by one party. Mostly I think the guys were imagining the girls cutting them off for a month (though they really needn't have worried, most of us thought it was a bad idea, too.)
67: When I was in high school church choir, I pretty much lived at the church during Holy Week. Thursday, Friday, Easter Vigil and two masses on Sunday.
What the graduate of an urban commuter school misses out on. One of the things.
During the High Holy Days I'm present for 9 services. I'm choral too. Do you sing at all now?
It was like walking around inside a zombie movie.
That's just what my colleague said when she explained why the elevator ride was so creepy this morning.
One petty girls-school-ism I remember from high school is that the eucharistic ministers (who were juniors and seniors) would draw nice, pretty ash crosses on the foreheads of girls they liked and put ugly, gross splotches on the foreheads of girls they didn't, knowing they couldn't wash them off and had to look like that all day. Not exactly the spirit of the holiday...
knowing they couldn't wash them off
touch them up a little bit?
73: I haven't much since my daughters were born, and having to give it up was painful. We sang mostly plainchant and Renaissance polyphony for the Latin Mass, and the choir included atheists, Jews and even (gasp) Episcopalians.
Apo, you need to get out of the south more often.
I never saw it before grad school -- in Texas. And I grew up in an area with strong enough Catholic representation to merit a TV priest. (He'd show up on the local programs from time to time to explain Catholicky things to heathens like me.)
I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I did see my name mentioned in 50. I am indeed heading off to get ashes imposed on my brow. I grew up pretty spiky Episcopalian like DominEditrix, but the more Anglo-catholic practices have spread out to the more protestant branches. Holy Communion every week is pretty standard in most Episcopal churches, but 80 years ago morning prayer with monthly Communion was more common.
I'm heading off to a 7PM service. I couldn't bear to get up for the 7:30 AM one, and I only get half an hour for lunch.
NCP--You can always wash the ashes off.
You know what's fun?
"The church does not charge a fee for sacraments. However, we charge $150 for the upkeep of the the church, electricity, and maintenance. That just happens to coincide with the wedding."
Bloody doctrine of double-effect.
as noted, high-church episcopalians (aka "smells and bells" types) do the whole ash thing as well.
Cala, the more you relate the horrors of the Catholic wedding, the more heathens and heretics (like myself) are going to advise you to tell them to fuck themselves.
You can get a lot of nice shrimp for $150.