Why the Ashes?
Fr. Brian Carpenter
Originally posted on 2/17/2010

Many people wonder why Catholics receive ashes to mark the beginning of Lent. In fact, many Catholics themselves, while eager to receive ashes, often do not understand the reason for receiving ashes. So it seems appropriate on Ash Wednesday to offer a little bit of education about this practice.

To begin with, we must remember that as Catholics, we take creation seriously. We do not believe that our bodies or the material world is simply a matter of happenstance. That is to say, we are not purely spiritual beings, but we have bodies, and these bodies are important (and indeed essential) to our being. Given that we have bodies given to us by God, and that these bodies exist in a created, material world (also provided by God), we use our bodies and created things to assist us in worship. So the created world is both a means for us to come to the knowledge of God, and it is a means through which we can worship God.

Ashes, have long been used as a tangible sign of repentance. In the Bible, there are several accounts of people using ashes in this fashion. When Jonah warns the people if Nineveh of their offensive behavior, the king covered himself with a sackcloth and sat in ashes. The prophet Daniel recounts putting on sackcloth and ashes, along with fasting and prayer, as a sign of repentance.

The use of ashes by Catholics has a similar connotation today. It is a tangible sign of our inner commitment to repentance and conversion. Unlike our secular world that tends to ignore sin, or to misuse psychology in order to place the culpability for sin elsewhere, Catholics deal with sin head on. We do not pretend that there is no sin in the world. Nor do we pretend that we are not responsible for our sins. Instead we recognize that we all have sinned, and that we are in need of conversion. We use this season of Lent as a special way of focusing, or rather refocusing our lives.

Because we are incarnate beings, it is often helpful to have outward symbols to assist us in this process. While it is not necessary for Catholics to receive ashes or attend Mass on Ash Wednesday, many Catholics tend to do so. Ideally this should be done as a way of using visible and tangible signs to assist us in entering into the period of repentance and conversion. The ashes themselves do not make us holy, but they serve as a tangible manifestation of our inner desire for repentance and conversion. Phrased another way, it is one way in which we as Catholics use our bodies to enter into worship.

While ultimately conversion requires a chance of heart, often times bodily gestures can assist in this process. This is because the body and soul are intimately connected to each other. So by using physical signs with our bodies, we can affect change in our soul (positively or negatively). Ashes, serve to positively remind us of our need for conversion, to repent from our sin, and to live our lives with increased fidelity to the Gospel.