Letting a Ritual Do
- Note: This pious kid is not ours.
As someone who explains Christianity for a living, I thought I would be well equipped to explain it to our own kid. To the endless series of questions — Why do you call that man “Father?” Why can’t I have communion yet? What does “Alleluia” mean? Will I be allergic to the steam coming out of that, that, thing the man is swinging? — I have usually had answers that could be simplified to kid-level. Recently though, I was faced with the first catechetical question that truly stumped me: “Why do we put ashes on our heads?”
Now it’s been several weeks since Ash Wednesday, and I still haven’t come up with a satisfactory answer for our preschooler. Our usual catechetical setting for liturgical gestures and adornments is during the quiet parts of Mass, of course, in hushed tones from below the pew, where kids sit, seeing virtually nothing but purses, umbrellas, and Cheerios. But this particular question occurred during a different setting: the nighttime, bedside discussion about what’s going to happen the next day, a kind of catechetical vigil we perform for an upcoming holiday or holy day.
This tradition began in order to explain secular holidays, such as Labor Day, Columbus Day, and Presidents Day — you know, days off from preschool. And with each of these holidays, I could concoct a story that makes sense at kid-level. (The Columbus Day story remains the favorite, probably due to my insertion of piracy and dramatic weather events.) The days off for Jewish holidays? No problem! Let’s learn about the lunar year! Even the major feasts of Christmas and Easter are reasonably simple to explain, primarily because they have gripping narratives to tell. To be honest, I’ve found the Trinity (“Why do we say Father, Son, Holy Spirit?”) easier to discuss than Ash Wednesday.
It’s not that I don’t know the historical backgrounds to this ritual behavior in the Ancient Near East, in the history of Christianity, in the modern liturgical renewal movement, and so on. It’s not that I don’t know the scriptural sources that supposedly “explain” the ritual. It’s not like I didn’t try the standard responses about ashes, dust, change, conversion, humility, and the catch-all, that it’s about “being good.”
But now after weeks of pondering, I’ve come to the conclusion (quite surprising to myself) that I shouldn’t try to explain the ashes of Ash Wednesday. As scholars of ritual, such as Catherine Bell, Pierre Bourdieu, and Ronald Grimes, so often remind us, there are many practices not explicable in words, practices which have a “logic” of their own and are not expressible in language. Sometimes the gesture is the meaning, and anything I say will make it less understandable. As a case in point, our kid loves watching baptisms, and she has not yet asked what that ritual means — she just gets it, through the different logic of ritual practice.
This conclusion doesn’t apply to all, or even most, aspects of our shared ritual life. And in the coming years, our daughter will get more and more explanations of what we do — ways of wedding the logic of practice with the logic of words. But for now, I am learning a new lesson in catechizing: it’s appropriate in some cases to let the ritual be. Or, we might say, to let the ritual do. Its meaning resonates deep in the bones of humanity, deeper than words can go.
Wouldn’t a pre-schooler be able to understand that the ashes are supposed to remind us that we are dust and will return to dust when we die and our bodies decompose?
Does the pre-schooler in question know the story of how God makes Adam out of dust?
Does the pre-schooler in question understand that when we die, our bodies do decompose?
Does the pre-schooler in question understand that people die and that he will also die?
Does the pre-schooler in question understand that Jesus died by being executed on a cross?
OK so now try to explain to me why my inner-city parish church is filled to overflow on Ash Wednesday mainly from the nearby buildings of Federal and State employees. Why do they forget the Holy days of obligation and Good Friday.
Ash Wednesday alwys had more intrinsic symbols and felt connection– can’t compare with our made up “Holy Days” which have no connection to the cycles out of which some originated. When bishops conferences have the power to move and suppress them, how would we expect more than Christmas –at best– to survive? Holy days once marked special Catholic liturgical llife — and endless confessions of missing Mass. It’s time to retire them…
As for ashes, when in history did thiis current ritual begin of marking the forehead with these traditional words?
ed gleason: The ritual of receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday is a bit more participatory — in this respect, it’s like receiving communion. But after you receive ashes on your forehead, you know they are still on your forehead when you exit from the church. So you carry the reminder of the ashes on your forehead wherever you happen to go. If the ritual resonates with you to begin with, then carrying the ashes with you on your forehead helps to sustain the resonance of the ritual. It is meaningful ritual to you.
“As for ashes, when in history did thiis current ritual begin of marking the forehead with these traditional words?”
Do just Americans put them on the forehead? Where I grew up in southern Europe, we would get a dash of them on our heads in the hair.
MAT
That sounds playful! I wonder how that developed. What words were used? Any hair growth miracles attributed (OK, that was sarcastic, but not meant to be disrespectful!)?
It’s not as apparent as on the forehead (unless youre bald or very blond, I guesss!), but if there’s enugh of them, perhaps a little itchiness for the rest of the day is some kind of reminder!
EWTN has an instructive piece on the history of sackcloth and ashes:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/ASHES.htm
Many saints’ lives ended on the floor, lying on a piece of sackcloth strewn with ashes.
In New Orleans all sorts of people get ashes, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and non-believers. So I think the ritual must have value beyond the Catholic meaning. On second thought maybe everyone shares the Catholic realization that we come from and will return to dust. But what need or longing does it satisfy to carry the sign around all day in a totally public way? It certainly doesn’t ward off death.
What are people with ashes on their foreheads saying to each other? Or are they saying it to God? Or for God? Or maybe it is just/also a sign of community solidarity? Everyone is welcome to have the ashes so many come. Is it because they’re free that everyone wants some? Cheap grace of some sort? What sort?
Hmmmmmmm. . .
Ann Olivier: Isn’t New Orleans the place where they have a big Mardi Gras celebration? Wouldn’t the spirit of Mardi Gras prompt many Mardi Gras participants to get ashes on Ash Wednesday?
Our local Baptist superchurch (a branch of which the Catholic Sen. Marco Rubio attends) found the demand for ashes from ex-Catholics so overwhelming that, I am reliably informed, it sent a delegation to the Catholic chancery office to find out how to do Ash Wednesday.
No word from my source on the response. But I am reminded of the late Archbishop Philip Hannan’s story about the Protestant military chaplain who saw the results young Fr. Hannan was getting from Confession for his Catholic GIs. (It’s in Hannan’s book.) The chaplain thought it would be good for nice Protestant boys and bugged Hannan so much to find out how to do it . Hannan put him off, but he kept boring in, so Hannan finally gave him the rite — in Latin.
I remember an Ash Wednesday some years ago when a single priest in what was then a three or four priest parish was alone for Ash Wednesday due to one associate being very ill and another at a relative’s funeral. He “commissioned” two Eucharistic ministers, who were widely accepted and respected, to assist with the ashes since it would take him well over a half hour just to do that during the liturgy. The faithful — who had no problem with receiving Communion from a lay person — largely avoided them and his line continued for about 25 minutes whle the lay ministers just stood there. I heard there were some complaints to the chancery for his breach of liturgical norms, but it is interesting that for many — even in fairly liberal parish — that they had to “receive” from the priest.
Though not historically knowledgeable about Ash Wednesday, I thought it good to give a spiritual answer to a physical doing. Ash wednesday might come out of the Scriptures which speak of our enemies being ashes under our feet.
While this may or may not be the case, it surely fits the ritual as the ashes on our foreheads are a reminder of these Scriptures. It is by the cross that these promises are held dear to us as our enemies are becoming more and more numerous.
Of course these Scriptures are speaking of the time when the world will see a world-wide nuclear war spoken of by Isaiah in Isaiah 13. This war occurs just before Jesus’ return according to Isaiah 13:12-13. God sends the earth out of orbit from around the sun by this world-wide nuclear war.
Isiaiah chapters 14-23 speak of every nation in the world and what will happen to them in this nuclear war. In chapter 24, God tells us that He will turn the world upside down due to a world-wide flood which will follow the earth leaving its orbit.
Three days of darkness occur after the earth leaves its orbit and then comes the flood which Isaiah speaks of in chapter 24. “For behold the windows of heaven are opened.” This would be the spiritual answer as to why the ashes are placed on the forehead. God bless.
In his book The Four Cultures of the West, John O’Malley talks about two cultures relevant to this, the systematic study of knowledge in the academic/professional culture and the culture of art and performance. He fits the Mass squarely in the culture of art and performance. Yet I think the biggest difference pre-post Vatican II is the loss of that culture of art and performance. This is a generalization, but now it seems we don’t just do rituals, we do them while explaining them and explaining how we will then feel, instead of trusting that the ritual will actually generate the feeling. “And now we will light the dingus, which symbolizes the so-and-so, and fills our hearts with thus-and-such etc.”
Everything has become didactic. Most peculiar.
Even for pre-schoolers, a winning explanation of our dusty, ash-conceived heritage, in miraculous visual form – paradoxically encouraging to boot – is illustrated in the Hubble Telescope Deep Space photographs of the glorious – yet wildly beyond our mere mortal powers – starborn, light-infused “dust” from which we came and to which (I desperately hope and pray!) we shall return. Also, even for pre-schoolers, the image in 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick of a fetus floating in space as the astronaut shoots throught the time warp presents another mind/spirit expanding vision that reveals to the young (and older of us who need it more) the intimate, infinite self-donation of God to Creation.
Alleluia!
Tell these kids in language they’ll understand: the ashes are given or the same reason that animals are blessed: it’s kewwwwwwwwl.
Later on they can learn the real reason – if anyone knows.
Jeanne, I don’t see over-explanation in our parish. But something is happening among the folks in the pews and “out there.” We had three Masses with ashes and three separate liturgies of the word with ashes on Ash Wednesday, for a total of six chances to get them in one day. On weekends we have seven Masses in two days. But the consensus of ushers was that we had more people on Ash Wednesday than we do on normal Sundays.
And people did accept ashes from extraordinary ministers and deacons as well as the priest.
We will be SRO for both Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Sunday will have the Vigil Mass and a Mass at dawn instead of the usual two Saturday Masses. We also will be an insult to the Fire Department with the crowding at the Holy Thursday and Good Friday services. That never happened on the weekdays in my youth. No one is telling people they have to come. They are deciding that on their own.
To “get through” to your preschooler, this grandma says tell stories. Say that sackcloth and ashes means deep sorrow and repentance. Tell about the prophets and Job. Talk about what we do to show we’re really sorry, and so on. If a family member or a pet has died, how did your child feel. How did s/he mourn and in what ways? Talk about why is it so important to show sorrow, and how that helps us not to forget but to start over again, with God’s help.
BTW. During my years in parish ministry, I remember a wise and experienced pastor saying people always show up in droves at church when they get something for free–ashes, and palms, for example. The best “fee gift” is the Bread of Life but, sadly, not everyone makes this connection.
When I pursued graduate studies in liturgy, I learned that the practice of sprinkling ashes on the top of the head, rather than marking the forehead, is actually the more ancient custom, and is still the custom in most of southern Europe and other areas. It is also more in accord with the Gospel of the day, where Jesus criticizes those who disfigure their faces when they fast. The rubric in the Roman Missal says: “Then the priest places ashes on the head . . . ” That seems to cover either practice.
Tom, that’s heartening to hear. What do you think pulls them in?
Speaking of children mourning –
Sometimes I think we have forgotten how serious little children can be. My nephew’s family has no religion at all. But his eight year old definitely has spiritual linclinations. When she was very little she became very attached to a statue of Buddha. Recently she found some snail shells in the back yard. She made a grave for them, buryed them, and surrounded the grave with a circle of carefully placed white stones. Her father says she’s a Druid. Here’s a picture of her commemoration of them.
http://slimbolala.blogspot.com/
I think kids have the deepest sorts of feelings, same as grown=ups. And I think my grand-niece showed that we have an instinct to put things back in order somehow, if only symbolically.
Thomas Farrell –
Yes, the whole New Orleans area celebrates Mardi Gras, usually around a million people. Except for the French Quarter it really isn’t an orgy, just a lot of make-believe fun. But lots of people, including Protestants, also “do” Lent. I remember in college I was much surprised when a Protestant friend said she was giving up candy for Lent.
Tom, that’s heartening to hear. What do you think pulls them in?
_______________
Because, despite the world’s best efforts, people know and want to be told that there is something more out there, something better.
“Remember you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”
These are not words of despair, they are words of hope.
In that humility of being told that we are mere lowly dust, we are reminded that this world is transitory and temporary. This existence is not the be all and end all. Although we are in the world, we are not of the world. We are made for things beyond this world. Better things.
That is what pulls them in. And that is what even little children need to understand, that we are mere sojourners in this brief preparatory stage for what is the Real Life to come.
I don’t know what pulls them in. The former pastor and I suspected it had something to do with giving something away — ashes on Ash Wednesday and palms on Palm Sunday. We talked about having Gravel Sunday in ordinary time, when everyone would get a small stone to put in his or her shoe, and we could see what would happen. I do know there is a level of intensity in the voluntary events — Holy Thursday and Good Friday — that was never present in my youth as an altar boy and later, in college, when they were a cheap date in addition to being a good thing to do.
Bender may be right about a universal call, but in my experience it was not ever thus.
Many interstng posts… still curious about what century this may have started in either form… maybe it’s one of our oldest customs and in Cqatholic DNA which spreads to many!!!
I have good memories of some Ash Wednesday stories at various parishes — including the downtown Cathedral where, in the late ’70′s, four of us distributed ashes for over a half hour twice a day… not like that today. Would love to have some surveys with folks on all of that. Perhaps its once a year appeal as well is great — and now Palm Sunday which is distant second.
Hope we’re not TS Eliot’s referents who “had the experience, but missed the meaning.”
Folks who only attend Ash Wednesday, it seems to me, do so mainly because, while they may not agree with or may not themselves be able to ‘get on with’ the Catholic Church throughout the year, nonetheless recognize there is something there; something real and important. And hope is not lost.
I had to explain it this year to our six year old son.
I sort of like the way the Latinos say it: “Recuerdes hombre, eres polvo, y a polvo te volveras” Que dramatico!
:-)
Tom, I’d be curious to know if you think your parish has a better handle on letting the ritual do the work, as Michael Peppard describes: “there are many practices not explicable in words, practices which have a “logic” of their own and are not expressible in language. Sometimes the gesture is the meaning, and anything I say will make it less understandable.”
When I think of the difference in style (not form) between the liturgies I experienced in the old days and the experiences my kids have today, they are worlds apart. And this is not a Latin Mass vs. Paul VI Mass thing, it’s about the style – the atmosphere, the demeanor, the understanding one brings to what is going on. It’s about formal and sacred vs. friendly and egalitarian. It’s about participating in a clear and understandable liturgy that’s mostly conveyed by word vs. experiencing an encounter with a more complex ritual that utilizes image, gesture and all those other things that can’t be reduced to words. It’s about active external participation (e.g., everyone playing a role) vs. each person’s internal participation (e.g., opening the eyes and heart).
I agree, Jeanne. well said… Although I love my friendly, egalitarian parish, the symbols are lacking… except on Holy Thursday when a side sacristy is beautifully and simply transformed with the consecrated bread and wine sitting on a table in the middle of a flowered and candle lit room and my soft “ubi caritas” or a more contemporary meditative tune is played softly and my teens will sit for 15-20 minutes in some form of meditation… it’s very moving for me, too, obviously to see them enter into the mystery….
Yup it seems we have the friendly and egalitarian, clear and understandable, active external participation thing down. We need to work on the part that’s the formal and sacred ritual encounter that can’t be reduced to words. So maybe focus the Liturgy of the Word on the former and the Liturgy on the Eucharist on the latter? I do miss that whispered Canon.
We need to work on the part that’s the formal and sacred ritual encounter that can’t be reduced to words.
Hence the rediscovery of, and recent recommendations for, sacred silence. (See, e.g.)
” — people know and want to be told that there is something more out there, something better. ”
Some would call that catering to self-delusion. Others call it faith. Others all it hope.
The friendly egalitarian, clear and understandable, active external participation thing is sacred and formal, as much as any other version of the liturgy. If silence and incomprehensibility are your measure of “mystery”, you probably missing the real mystery made manifest. God comes sometimes inwhirlwinds, sometimes with a still small voice, sometimes a Spirit, sometimes a true man. In each of those encounters it is God who is important, not the volume of the voice or other atmospherics.
Ann Oliver, Re kid’s spirituality I suggest the little book by David Hay, “Why Spirituality is Difficult for Westerners,” in case you haven’t read it. He’s a Scottish zoologist who’s done a number of studies of children’s spirituality. He found that you don’t have to brainwash kids to be religious, as some claim. It’s the other way around. It takes some doing to extinguish their spiritual curiosity. Or so I recall from my reading a few years back.
“The friendly egalitarian, clear and understandable, active external participation thing is sacred and formal, as much as any other version of the liturgy. If silence and incomprehensibility are your measure of “mystery”, you probably missing the real mystery made manifest. God comes sometimes inwhirlwinds, sometimes with a still small voice, sometimes a Spirit, sometimes a true man. In each of those encounters it is God who is important, not the volume of the voice or other atmospherics.”
Jim McK –
Sounds like you think you can judge just what other people have experienced of God, including the those who have had mystical experiences of one sort or another. But unless you have had experiences comparable to all the others, including the rather common ones some people apparently have at Mass of the presence of God in His nonmaterial ineffability, then I don’t see how you can judge whthr or not “mystical” (with scare quotes, yet!) have any real value at all.
What makes you qualitied to tell others what their religious experiences have revealed to them? Yes He was there in the whirlwind and the small voice, but how can you rule out the experiences of Paul and John, of the heights and depths, and those other ultimately indescribable aspects of God which they seem to have known? And do you throw out St. Teresa of Avila and John of the Corss and Thomas Merton, and the old ladies in the pew who meet their mysterious God at Mass regularly?
Ann,
I am responding in the same spirit as those who have claimed the friendly egalitarian ritual is not sacred, or is less sacred than some other form. If you expand your critique to them, I will accept your rebuke. But if you let their remarks stand, than I claim the same judgmental power for myself.
My position is a classic one. God is not limited to any particular form, and the same form can on one occassion reveal God and on another not. It is not the form that matters, it is God revealing God. Nostalgic longing for the forms of childhood is not longing for God, but for the externals of childhood.
I believe that people flock to Ash Wednesday services because at some level they know that wearing those ashes means they’re (still) Catholics–no matter their failings. Many of them foster the hope that this lent will make some difference. Perhaps they will believe a little more, pray a little more, love a little more, forgive a little more. It’s a day of promise….a day to humble oneself before God and neighbor (did you know you have dirt on your forehead?)
Jim, I had no intent to offend. I know people respond to liturgies in different ways. Yet my experience tells me there is a huge difference in the style of liturgical practice common when I grew up and the style common as my children grew up. Not all of that evolution has been good. (I don’t think we can or should return to the days of my youth and just to be clear, would love to see a solemn, complex ritual celebrated by a woman priest.)
I do think there has been a loss of the sacred for a number of different reasons, including the topic of this post, and think it is well worth talking about. I am curious how to do that without offending.
Jeanne,
I was not offended by your post. Ann’s maybe. What do you think it means to say the sacred has been lost from someone’s religion? I cannot think of a way to say that without being offensive.
If you think there has been a loss of the sacred, you probably are being challenged by the liturgy to discover God’s holiness as it is present today. What do you think has been lost? How does that relate to the sacral? How do you see holiness?
Jim, point well taken. I should have said that in many of the experiences I have had of liturgy (which may just be my bad luck), the thing I miss is the feeling of the sacred.
The best non-liturgical example of the sacred I can think of is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in DC (just visited there last month). Because the Tomb and its rituals commemorate an extraordinary sacrifice, it is considered sacred. This sacredness is created and signified by the ongoing formal and solemn ceremonies of the guarding of the tomb and the changing of the guard. The ritual actions and objects and the place itself manifest the sacred and direct the visitors’ attention to the memory of the unknown soldier and by extension the sacrifice of all of those who have given their lives for their country. Visitors participate by standing in silence and opening their minds and hearts to the magnitude and poignancy of the sacrifice that the sacred actions commemorate.
To me the sacred is our way of witnessing to all that is extraordinary. That’s what gets destroyed when the priest, for example, chats from the altar, or acts like an emcee during mass or drags all the little kids up to “watch” the consecration (seriously). And this is not done in an environment of radical liturgical experimentation. I find it prevalent in more affluent, conservative parishes. Gaaa.
Jim McK –
YOu seem to think that the “egalitarian” is somehow equal to the sacred. But since the sacred includes God, our side of any equation cannot possibly balance the infinitely sacred. They are simply not equally valuable. A liturgy which seeks the sacredness of God is quite different from an egalitarian one which honors the sacredness of God’s creation. But a liturgy doesn’t have to have only one aspect — parts can be egalitarian, parts can be directed to the infinitely sacred. The latter is not, as you seem to think, totally “incomprehensible”, it is inexpressible in mere words.
So your attack against Lisa still looks unfounded to me, and I won’t apologize for defending her view. She found in the old Mass something directed to the sacredness of God, a dimension generally lacking in today[‘s Mass. Many of us, even some liberals like me, agree with her.
Ann,
You are quite right. I believe that God chose to dwell among us, first as a real human person and now as a Spirit who lives in our hearts. As a consequence, the egalitarian impulses in liturgy reveal the sacred as much as older forms did. And they follow the patern God uses to communicate with us instead of relying on our own efforts at embodying the ineffable.
If you feel something has been lost, look for it and you are likely to find it. God constantly is reaching out to us as the cosmically remote Father, but also as Son and Spirit. The heights and depths of God are expressed in multiple ways, each of which is sacred.
Jim MdK –
Yes, God is present in many things in many ways. You are overlooking His presence in the kind of contemplative prayer which do not necessarily involve things of the world, and that’s why ordinary language cannot express the content of such experiences. They include the garden variety sort of contemplative prayer that many people used to experience often at Mass. There is no opposition between it and non-contemplative prayer, so leaving some room in the Mass for it and the sorts of liturgical accompaniment that lend themselves to such prayer shouldn’t be difficult. IT used to happen all the time in the old forms, and it’s one reason why many people want the old forms. But there is no reason why the forms have to be the old ones. With some imagination the new forms could also include it.
Read some of Fr. Thomas Keating. The latter has a book on the Mass
The Mystery of Christ, as well as various other works about contemplative prayer.
Why would you think I haven’t read Keating? Or I do not promote contemplative prayer?
My complaints were about associating the sacred with only one particular form of prayer. Such an attachment makes form more important the prayer.
“. . . the egalitarian impulses in liturgy reveal the sacred as much as older forms did. And they follow the patern God uses to communicate with us instead of relying on our own efforts at embodying the ineffable.”
Jim –
Many simply disagree with you. They/we simply do not find all of the same values in the Mass that use to be there in abundance, at any rate.
You certainly don’t sound like you’ve read Keating or done CP. If you did you’d be more aware of the sort of prayer that is not turned towards this world.
But Ann, my objection is that excessive attachment to the worldly forms of prayer is a problem. Insisting on Latin or a particular ritual form is as worldly as it gets.
If you think something is missing, look for it. You will likely find it, if you’re looking for something God wants to give.