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Ash Wednesday

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Ash Wednesday

Following Shrove Tuesday yesterday, today is Ash Wednesday, the official first day of Lent during the Christian year and the prelude to Easter.

Lent represents the 40 days that Jesus Christ spent in the wilderness, fasting and contemplating his mission on earth.

Today is known as the ‘Day of Ashes’ because of the practice of having ash rubbed &  drawn on the forehead in the shape of a cross (representing Christ’s crucifixion), by a priest at the dedicated Ash Wednesday church service.

The priest and participants from the church congregation intone the phrase either the words:-

“Repent, and believe in the Gospel” or  the dictum “Remember that you are dust, and to dust, you shall return.”       

Anglican, Catholic, and most Protestant and Christians hold Ash Wednesday services around the world. Following the service, participants observe some sort of fasting, abstinence and spiritual contemplation for 40 Days, ending on Maundy Thursday in 2018.

The practice of using ash comes from the 11th Century and is taken from the Biblical Book of Daniel, where ashes are regarded as a sign of Penance & fasting.

The ashes are normally made by the burning of palm crosses. These palm crosses were handed out to church congregations during the previous year’s Palm Sunday service (commemorating Christ’s entry into Jerusalem to crowds waving palm leaves in celebration) and given back to the priest shortly before Ash Wednesday.

The priest will then burn the crosses and mix the ash normally with Holy Oil to sanctify and make a ‘paste’ with which to rub on the participant’s forehead.

The Roman Catholic 5-Points of Ash Wednesday.

Father Rix, a young Filipino Catholic priest had very succinctly put that putting ashes on your forehead without knowing or practice the five embodiment of Ash Wednesday was just like putting dirt on your forehead and nothing relevant about it.

What are the 5 Points?

  1. Repentance; we have to accept our sins, change and not do it again then move forward.
  2. Quaresma is the 40 days of repentance before Easter, where you give up something you enjoy as a reminder that you are in repentance.
  3. Fasting and Abstinence.
  4. Prayers and Alms-giving
  5. Ash reminds us of our mortality that we came from dust and in dust, we shall return.

Palm Sunday

Blogs Easter/Lent Philippines Superstitions
Jesus on a donkey @ V&A Photo by PH Morton

Jesus on a donkey @ V&A, Photo by PH Morton

 

Palm Sunday is a movable feast and so is Easter for that matter.

A movable feast is based on a complex formula that has something to do with the marriage between the Justinian and the Gregorian calendars, coupled with Western and Eastern traditions.  In addition, phases of the moon are also incorporated.

Anyway Palm Sunday is seven days before Easter. It is the time to commemorate Jesus’s entrance to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.  He rode an ass or donkey as opposed to a horse; a horse is perceived more as a warlike or used by the rich & nobles etc.. Whilst the donkey is symbolic of humility and peace.  Jesus wanted to show that he was for the poor as well as for the rich.   Jesus was for Everyman.

It was said that the people laid down their cloaks and little palm leaves to the path where Jesus would pass.

Today the Churches will give their parishioners branches or palm leaves, some are woven into crosses, to raise and wave during exultation and prayers.

The little palm crosses are encouraged to be taken home and put away to be taken back for next year’s Ash Wednesday.

Some superstitions have been attached to the crosses. In the Philippines which I have carried back here in the UK, the crosses are hung up over windows or doorways. This is to prevent the house from being struck by lightning.

Palm Crosses that are handed out by the Priest at churches are normally made by religious orders.

Make your own paper cross. Click here.

Mothering Sunday 2013

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Sunday 10 March 2013  , the 4th Sunday (Laetare) in Lent is commemorated as Mothering Sunday or Mothers Day (a later addition)

 

Mothering Sunday orignates from the 16th century when Christian people returned to their mother church. the principal definition of a mother church in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is ” The Church, esp. the Roman Catholic  Church  is considered as a ‘mother ‘in its functions of nourishing and protecting the believer”. Another definition is  of  a  church (as a parish church) which has responsibility for or oversight of another sometimes smaller  church, chapel  etc.

 This was either  a large local church, or more often the nearest Cathedral.  Those who attended the main church were commonly said to have gone “a-mothering”, although whether this preceded the term Mothering Sunday is unclear. In later times, Mothering Sunday became a day when domestic servants were given a day off to visit their mother church, usually with their own mothers/parents  and other family members. It was often the only time that whole families could gather together, since on other days they were prevented by their working hours. Children who were also servants were also given a day off on that date so they could visit their families (or, originally, return to their “mother” church). The children would pick wild flowers along the way to place in the church or give to their mothers. Eventually, the religious tradition evolved into the Mothering Sunday secular tradition of giving gifts to mothers.

At church services flowers are distributed to mothers.

By the 1920s the custom of keeping Mothering Sunday had tended to lapsed in UK and Europe.  In 1914, inspired by Anna Jarvis in the United States and Constance Penswick Smith, who was a daughter of athe vicar of Coddington, England,   created the Mothering Sunday Movement. In 1921 she wrote a book asking for the revival of the festival and there is a memorial in Coddington’s church. Its widescale revival was through the influence of American and Canadian soldiers serving abroad during World War II; the traditions of Mothering Sunday, still practised by the Church of England (CoE)

 and Church of  Ireland were merged with the newly-imported traditions and celebrated in the wider Catholic and secular society.

As in the US,  UK-based merchants saw the commercial opportunity and relentlessly promoted it in the UK; by the 1950s it was celebrated across all the UK.

People from Ireland and the UK started celebrating Mother’s Day, on the same day that Mothering Sunday on the fourth Sunday in Lent.  The two celebrations have now been mixed up,merged and many people think that they are one of the same. Mothers Day is celebrated in US and other countries in May.

The_Church_of_St_Michael_at_Munslow,_Shropshire_-_geograph.org.uk_-_674610

 

Mothering Sunday church servive

Mothering Sunday church service

St John the Evangelist

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Today the 27th December is the commemoration and feast day of Saint John. The Roman Catholic Church calls him “Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist”, and in the Anglican Communion, which calls him “John, Apostle and Evangelist”. In the Tridentine Calendar he was commemorated also on each of the following days up to and including 3 January.

From wikipedia

St John the Evangelist, painting by Jacopo Pontormo 1525

St John the Evangelist, painting by Jacopo Pontormo 1525

John the Evangelist (יוחנן Standard Hebrew Yoḥanan, Tiberian Hebrew Yôḥānān meaning “Yahweh is gracious”, Greek: Εὐαγγελιστής Ἰωάννης) (c. AD 1 – c. 100) is the conventional name for the author of the Gospel of John. Traditionally he has been identified with the author of the other Johannine works in the New Testament—the three Epistles of John and the Book of Revelation, written by a John of Patmos—as well as with John the Apostle and the Beloved Disciple mentioned in the Gospel of John. However, at least some of these connections have been debated since about 200.

The Gospel of John refers to an unnamed “Beloved Disciple” of Jesus who bore witness to the gospel’s message.The composer of the Gospel of John seemed interested in maintaining the internal anonymity of the author’s identity.
The apostle John was a historical figure, one of the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church after Jesus’ death.Some scholars believe that John was martyred along with his brother (Acts 12:1-2), although many other scholars doubt this. Harris believes that the tradition that John lived to old age in Ephesus developed in the late 2nd century, although the tradition does appear in the last chapter of the gospel, though this debatable tradition assumes that John the Evangelist, John the Apostle, the Beloved Disciple mentioned in John 21 and sometimes also John the Presbyter are the same person.

Of the other New-Testament writings, it is only from the three Epistles of John and the Apocalypse that anything further is learned concerning the person of the Apostle. We may be permitted here to take as proven the unity of the author of these three writings handed down under the name of John and his identity with the Evangelist. Both the Epistles and the Apocalypse, however, presuppose that their author John belonged to the multitude of personal eyewitnesses of the life and work of Christ (cf. especially 1 John 1:1-5; 4:14), that he had lived for a long time in Asia Minor, was thoroughly acquainted with the conditions existing in the various Christian communities there, and that he had a position of authority recognized by all Christian communities as leader of this part of the Church. Moreover, the Apocalypse tells us that its author was on the  scenic island of Patmos a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea and one of the northernmost islands of the Dodecanese group. John was there waiting “for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus”, when he was honoured with the heavenly Revelation contained in the Apocalypse (Revelation 1:9).

The Coptic church states that St. John the Evangelist lived over 90 years, and they used to carry him to the gatherings of the believers. Because of his old age, he only gave very short sermons saying, “My children love one another.” It states that he wrote the gospel known after him, the Book of Revelation, and the three epistles ascribed to him. It confirms that he did not suffer martyrdom and died of old age in Ephesus,near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey.

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.
– St John