Aquinas | The University of Scranton

Defending ‘the smudge’ for Ash Wednesday
PATRICK MCLAUGHLIN
FAITH EDITOR
February 26, 2009 issue

“You have a little something on your forehead” is about as cheeky and humorous a line on Ash Wednesday as the classic “I met a man who said he hadn’t had a bite in a week—so I bit him.” Perhaps that’s why I love the line so much. I love hearing it, I love saying it, and I especially love sitting idly by while other, perhaps more anger-prone Catholics, tirelessly and voraciously defend their smudge against its perceived detractors, evidently not aware that there is unlikely to be anyone in this Western world who doesn’t know what that black mark on Catholic foreheads is.

Unfortunately, if there were such a person in this Western world, my experience leads me to believe that he would have to be a professed Catholic himself. Sure, the rudiments of the smudge are present. Catholics old enough to compose sentences (and young enough for them still to be coherent) are all aware that going to Ash Wednesday Mass and having a little pinch of ash smeared across your forehead in a shape meant to represent a cross is simply what one does when this particular liturgical event rolls around once a year. Eating paczki or fasnacht, or taking off your clothes and having your lewd behavior permanently memorialized on a “Girls Gone Wild” DVD the day before is simply part of the custom. This is the kind of “common knowledge Catholicism” that I would like to see systematically eliminated from the minds of the Catholic faithful. And so, a brief “Catechesis of the Smudge”:

First of all, about Ash Wednesday itself: Two important things to keep in mind are that, according to the “Roman Missal,” Ash Wednesday is not a “feast day” in the usual sense of the term. By the same token, Ash Wednesday is not a Holy Day of Obligation. The “common knowledge” will likely purport such inaccuracies as “yes it is” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Those indubitably valid deductions aside, I assert once again that Ash Wednesday is not a day of obligation. The custom of attending Mass on Ash Wednesday to participate in the initiation of the Lenten season is by all means laudable, but by no means required.

Now, about the smudge: First, what kind of ashes are we talking about? Thankfully, only few of those who received their theology degrees in a church basement believe that their pastor buys a couple of Montecristos on Fat Tuesday, lights up and makes the next day’s ashes with a snifter of fine brandy in his free hand. Indeed, that is not the way it’s done. As per the instructions in the “Roman Missal,” the ashes received on the foreheads of the faithful are supposed to be the product either of burnt olive branches (preferably from the Holy Land) or of the previous year’s blessed palms from Palm Sunday. The latter is the more common. Of course, in the days of modernism and the Internet, very few pastors remain who light their own palms ablaze for their ashes. Rather, it is common to buy them from a religious goods supplier. In any case, you can rest assured that no nicotine addictions were wrought in the production of your local parish’s ashes (assuming your pastor followed the rules).

Second, what’s the point of all this? I understand this one from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, though less from the former. If you had been listening while the ashes were being imposed upon your forehead, you might have noticed the priest saying words like, “Remember, man, you are dust, and to dust you will return.” That’s basically the whole idea. The use of ashes as signs of penance goes back many thousands of years, and is explicitly mentioned in the Bible (see, for instance, Matthew 11:21).

Ashes have a twofold significance, then. On the one hand, they are a reminder, as the formula indicates, of human mortality, which of course plays a role in Catholicism because of the belief in an eternal reward for one’s actions. Death, then, is a sign pointing either to everlasting bliss or everlasting pain, and so a reminder of the possibility of death is likewise a reminder that now is the time to secure our eternal destiny once and for all. Thus, ashes are also a sign of penance. The smudge symbolizes penance because it symbolizes death, and taking on this symbol of death is meant to effect a genuine conversion in the lives of the ash-laden. In other words, we express the beginning of this season of penance to the world in an open, distinct fashion in order to mark ourselves as unworthy of the great gift we are all hoping to achieve, eternal life.

And thus we come to a teleology of the smudge. Having explained its physical origins and the historical context whence it comes, we are left questioning the reason for which we wear the ashes. Is it just to let the world know, in quite a pharisaical manner, that we consider ourselves unworthy of heaven? I don’t believe so. Rather, I believe that the smudge should be worn as a badge of courage, a reminder as much to self as to others, of the great battle at which we have arrived. We who wear the smudge are drawing a line in the sand before our very selves, challenging ourselves, and threatening to wage war against ourselves in order to make ourselves, with God’s grace, into what we as yet are not, what we hope to be. The smudge is our way of reminding ourselves how great is the distance yet to be traversed before meeting our eternal reward, and of reminding ourselves that the time is now. As St. Paul says, “now is a very acceptable time…now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2).