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CellarDweller:
Jeff would've gone to work all toasty....... :laugh:
Jeff Wrangler:
So today is Ash Wednesday. This evening I will go to church, and the minister will smear ashes on my forehead while he (or she) says, "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I wish I could do this in the morning, but our ministers only have services at noon and in the evening on Ash Wednesday.
I decided years ago that I can see a point to receiving ashes early in the morning; going about all day with some dirt smeared on your forehead makes a silent testimony, at least for one day, that you are Christian. But what's the point of receiving ashes in the evening when you're just going to go home and go to bed? 8)
Penthesilea:
--- Quote from: CellarDweller on February 25, 2009, 01:14:55 pm ---Jeff would've gone to work all toasty....... :laugh:
--- End quote ---
Well, I thought of one schnapps, not one bottle of schnapps ;D :laugh: Holareduliöh!
But maybe it's for the better that he didn't think of it. And it seems it wasn't srictly necessary anyway.
Penthesilea:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on February 25, 2009, 02:49:33 pm ---So today is Ash Wednesday. This evening I will go to church, and the minister will smear ashes on my forehead while he (or she) says, "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I wish I could do this in the morning, but our ministers only have services at noon and in the evening on Ash Wednesday.
I decided years ago that I can see a point to receiving ashes early in the morning; going about all day with some dirt smeared on your forehead makes a silent testimony, at least for one day, that you are Christian. But what's the point of receiving ashes in the evening when you're just going to go home and go to bed? 8)
--- End quote ---
Because it isn't meant as a silent testimony that you're Christian, but as a reminder to yourself that you are ephemeral (the dust part) and prompt you to repent from your sinful ways.
When the rite first came up, only people who had commited gravely sins where outcast this way and chased away out of the church.
What keeps me wonder is that your denomination practises the rite. In Germany, only the roman-catholic church practises it.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Penthesilea on February 25, 2009, 03:18:36 pm ---Because it isn't meant as a silent testimony that you're Christian, but as a reminder to yourself that you are ephemeral (the dust part) and prompt you to repent from your sinful ways.
--- End quote ---
No offense, Little Darlin', but as a gay man who has lived through the worst years of the AIDS crisis, I do not need reminding that I am ephemeral, or anyone else, either.
No, that's not my point. My point is that having been raised Lutheran in a time when neither Lutherans nor ordinary Episcopalians practised the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday, I think it's a silly innovation. Even some Lutherans do it, now. I can see value in using the rite as a testimony of one's Christian profession, and that's about the only justification I can see for doing it. Reminder of sinfulness? The churches spend 46 weeks out of the year trying to make us feel good about ourselves and God, playing down mankind's sinfulness and need of repentence, and then all of a sudden for six weeks we're sinners who need to repent?
Oh, and the Gospel lesson that is traditionally read in the Episcopal Church on Ash Wednesday is from the sixth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, where Jesus is depicted telling his followers that when they fast (like in Lent?), they are not supposed to make themselves look like they are fasting, even, specifically, they are supposed to wash their faces--and then we dutifully troop up to the foot of the chancel steps to get dirt smeared on our foreheads? :laugh: It's just silly.
--- Quote ---What keeps me wonder is that your denomination practises the rite. In Germany, only the roman-catholic church practises it.
--- End quote ---
As I said, even some Lutherans do it nowadays. We didn't when I was growing up. And since the 1800s there have been some Anglicans and Episcopalians who really want to be Roman Catholic, they just don't want to deal with the Pope. I'm glad to hear that the Protestants in the Fatherland keep to the good old Protestant ways. ;)
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