The Collect for Ash Wednesday
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Lessons
We are treated as imposters and yet are true, as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and look – we are alive, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.
2 Corinthians 6:8b-10
From the Office of Readings
Therefore, let prayer, mercy and fasting be one single plea to God on our behalf, one speech in our defense, a threefold united prayer in our favor.
Let us use fasting to make up for what we have lost by despising others. Let us offer our souls in sacrifice by fasting. There is nothing more pleasing that we can offer to God, as the Psalmist said in prophecy: a sacrifice to god is a broken spirit; God does not despise a bruised and humbled heart.
Offer your soul to God, make him an oblation of your fasting, so that your soul may be a pure offering, a holy sacrifice, a living victim, remaining your own and at the same time made over to God. Whoever fails to give this to God will not be excused, for if you are to give him yourself, you are never without the means of giving.
To make these acceptable, mercy must be added. Fasting bears no fruit unless it is watered by mercy. Fasting dries up when mercy dries up. Mercy is to fasting as water is to the earth. However much you may cultivate your heart, clear the soil of your nature, root out vices, sow virtues, if you do not release the springs of mercy, your fasting will bear no fruit.
When you fast, if your mercy is thin, your harvest will be thin; when you fast, what your pour out in mercy will overflow into your barn. Therefore, do not lose by saving, but gather in by scattering. Give to the poor, and you give to yourself.
You will not be allowed to keep what you have refused to give to others.
St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop, d. 450
Concerning the Service
The BCP’s proper liturgy for Ash Wednesday is a treasure of the Church. Grave and austere, it casts a steely and solemn eye on the moral reality of the human condition, and it does not flinch or look away. I can’t tell you how many converts I know who first encountered modern Anglican liturgy in the Ash Wednesday service of an Episcopal church.
I know that something shifted deep in my soul the first time a priest smeared ashes on my head and told me that I am dust, many years ago. I was a Unitarian then, after a depressingly typical evangelical childhood. But there was something in the existential gravity of the Ash Wednesday rite that I just couldn’t get out of my head. I had glimpsed something serious in the Christian tradition – intellectually and morally serious. Something not found in all the corny nonsense of my religious upbringing. But also, something missing from the assured liberal optimism of the Unitarians.
It’s fair to say that Ash Wednesday and the Easter Vigil called me back to Christ.