The Collect for Ash Wednesday is not prayed only on the first Wednesday of Lent, but is repeated every day throughout it. It was composed by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer , who used as its base Latin Collect prayed at the benediction of the ashes in the medieval Church of England. We found this old Latin Collect in an English translation which seeks to preserve the style of the original:
Almighty and everlasting God, who hast compassion upon all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost not impute the sins of men by reason of their penitence; who also dost succour those who labour in necessity; Vouchsafe to bless [+] and sanctify [+] these ashes, which thou has appointed us to bear upon our heads after the manner of the Ninevites, in token of humiliation and holy devotion, and in order to the washing away of our offences; and, by this invocation of thy holy name, grant that all those that shall bear them upon their heads, to implore thereby thy mercy, may obtain from thee both the pardon of all their offences, and also grace so to begin today their holy fasts, that on the day of Resurrection, they may be counted worthy to approach to the holy Paschal feast, and hereafter to receive everlasting glory. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The moment when ashes are laid upon our heads marks the beginning of Great Lent. Lent is an ancient observance. A two-day fast in preparation for Easter was already observed in the 3rd century; and the rest of Holy Week was included slightly later. The extension of the Lenten season to the previous five weeks is implied by a passing reference to the “forty days” in one of the canons of Nicaea in 325. Probably it was a reference to a custom already well established. Fr. Piotr J. Kuszka, a Bizantine-Catholic priest and Basilian monk, writes:
Lent is above all a spiritual journey whose aim is Pascha – the Feast of all Feasts, it is the preparation for the fulfillment and revelation that Pascha brings. All church events revolve around Pascha: the cycle of feasts and Sundays in the year is a great journey and pilgrimage towards Pascha. Pascha is the end, but at the same time the beginning: the end of everything “old”, and the beginning of new life, continuous passage from this world to the Kingdom revealed in Christ.
Although for many Christians – and for us as well – the Great Lent is a time of self-reflection, which is a very personal thing, we should keep in mind that however the Kingdom revealed in Christ begins with personal conversion, it is realized through coexistence, cohabitation and cooperation with others. The Great Lent is truly an excellent time to remind the words of Anglican priest and poet John Donne :
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
So let us not (only) immerse in the vast depths of our souls. Let’s (also) try to notice the social dimension of Lent. The Lenten message of the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, may be of help here:
I greet you at the beginning of Lent.
In this year I’m going to invite you to think about the ancient traditions of preparing in solidarity with candidates for baptism, to think about the old disciplines of prayer and fasting and alms-giving and study, through the focus on those beyond our communities, in the developing world, who live in abject poverty.
I invite you to use the Millennium Development Goals as your focus for Lenten study and discipline and prayer and fasting this year. I’m going to remind you that the Millennium Development Goals are about healing the worst of the world’s hunger. They’re about seeing that all children get access to primary education. They’re about empowering women. They’re about attending to issues of maternal health and child mortality. They’re about attending to issues of communicable disease like AIDS and malaria and tuberculosis. They’re about environmentally sustainable development, seeing that people have access to clean water and sanitation and that the conditions in slums are alleviated. And finally, they are about aid, foreign aid. They’re about trade relationships, and they’re about building partnerships for sustainable development in this world.
As you pray through the forty days of Lent, I encourage you to attend to the needs of those with the least around the world. I would invite you to study, both about how human beings live in other parts of the world and our own responsibility as Christians.
What the Bible says more often than anything else is to tend to the needs of the widows and orphans, those without. Jesus himself says, “Care for the least of these.”
I invite you to consider your alms-giving discipline this Lent and remember those in the developing world who go without.
I wish you a blessed Lent and a joyful resurrection at the end of it that may be shared with others around the world.
God bless you.
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Here you can watch the Ash Wednesday celebration from Trinity Wall Street, New York.
