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Do Eastern Catholics Celebrate Ash Wednesday? or is strictly a Latin practice?


Dominus Vobiscum,

Sam

Glory to Jesus Christ!

No Eastern Christians (Orthodox or Catholic) keep Ash Wednesday. For all easterners, the Great Fast begins on a Monday.

However, Maronite Catholics do have an "imposition of ashes" for the faithful on the first day of the Great Fast, which is often called, tongue-in-cheek, "Ash Monday." This is definitely a copy of the RC custom.

Prof. J. Michael Thompson
Byzantine Catholic Seminary
Pittsburgh, PA

Thank you Professor.


Dominus Vobiscum,


Sam

For what reasons does the fast begin on Monday for east, Wednesday for west and how long have these traditions been set in stone?

I cannot answer the last question. But I can answer the first.

There are two reasons for the difference of the start of Great and Holy Lent in the East.

1 - Great and Holy Week is not considered a part of Lent in the East. It is its own separate time with its own rules of fasting and abstinence.

The Western Church considers Holy Week to be a part of Lent.

2 - The Western Church considers Sundays to be "mini-Easters" and thus a feast day, and do not hold the Lenten abstinence on Sunday. So Sundays are not counted as part of the 40 days of Lent.

In the East Sundays are still days of abstinence and are counted as part of the 40 days of Lent.

These two factors account for the difference in the timing of the beginning of Great and Holy Lent.

Hope that helps.

Dear Criostoir,

Ash Wednesday is the start of Lent for the West as part of its calculation of exactly 40 days.

The West allows for fasting on Saturday - something foreign to the East - and so the West calculates the 40 day Lenten period in terms of six weeks of six fasting days a piece to make up 36 days.

It then adds another four days to the beginning of this period to make the number "40" - Ash Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday and so Ash Wednesday begins the lenten period.

The East does not include Saturdays as strict fast days (even though no meat or meat by-products are eaten on Saturdays during the Great Fast) except, of course, for Holy Saturday (the East actually chastised Rome at one point for changing tradition in this regard and allowing for fasting on Saturdays).

And, for the East, Holy Week, as noted above, is NOT part of the Great Fast.

This is why the tenor of the Great Fast in the East is less focused on the Passion of Christ, as it is on reliving the experience of the Christian Catechumenate in an intense way - it is a time for Eastern Christians to go into the desert with Christ to fast, pray, meditate and read the scriptures.

In addition, the three weeks prior to the Great Fast are also weeks of preparation for the Fast and are included in the cycle of the Lenten Triodion or liturgical period.

The East believes we need to "wind down" slowly in terms of ceasing to eat meat and meat by-products as we prayerfully meditate on the "why's" of the Great Fast - reform of our lives (Sunday of the Final Judgement) and the need for God's forgiveness (Sunday of the Prodigal Son).

For the East, "40" is a symbolic term for "much" or "many" (days).

If one were to count the number of days during the Eastern Great Fast, there would be more than 40 days - especially if one also counts the three weeks leading up to the Great Fast.

Alex

Alex,

It has been my experience as a Latin Catholic that Saturdays are not days of strict fast in the Latin Church any longer either! Perhaps they need to recalculate the 40 days.

Actually the rules of fasting in the Latin Church have been so reduced as to make Lent merely a pale shadow of what it could and should be.

The current guidelines for most parishes in the US state:

Which brings me to the interesting question - when did the Latin Church start relaxing the fasting rules?

Even Martin Luther mentions that in his youth as a a Latin Catholic he was accustomed to abstain from eggs and dairy in Lent.

Now meat is eaten practically everyday in Lent by the Latins.

Where are the documents permitting this?

Is it possibly that the Hapsburg Empire was landlocked? But that makes no sense since most of Russia is too! Also, France, Italy, and Spain have over 60% of their boundaries on the Mediterranian or the Atlantic!

Dear Edward of the Two Neck Crosses,

Rome began "easing up" on the fasting in the late sixties, as I recall, since that coincided with our Basilians affirming that we EC's no longer had to fast on Wednesdays.

One Ukrainian Redemptorist publication even asserted that since Rome no longer insists on the Friday fast, if an EC didn't fast on any Friday, it could no longer be considered a "mortal sin."

As I understand it, only Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of strict fasting/abstaining/sober inner self-awareness in the Latin Church today.

I've seen this affirmed in documents by the Canadian Catholic Bishops' Conference and confirmed in RC calendars.

Alex

My patient Fr. Bob and I were talking about this the other day. We agreed that when societies get richer it is even more necessary to fast to rid oneself of attatchments to the world, the flesh and the devil.

And since Vatican II these regulations have been relaxed and relaxed. The point was that since there are so many places in the world where they don't even have access to meat, making them give up meat wouldn't be much of a sacrifice. So every one should take it upon themselves to do some kind of fast or penance on Fridays. Every Friday! Our priests don't preach on it, they don't enforce it in the confessionals, they don't do it themselves (for the most part) so why should anyone else do likewise?

Dear Dr Eric,

We used to have this famous poster, Stuart Koehl, who loved to regale us with his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things . . . well, all things period.

In response to my question, "How would you characterize contemporary Latin fasting regulations?" he responded with: ". . . lax?"



On second thought, it's a

I wonder how Stuart is these days? Anyone ever hear from him?

Alex

The National Council of Catholic Bishops released this letter on November 18, 1966. Please read it CAREFULLY before you make accusations.

"On Penance and Abstinence

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us [..,].. If we say that we have not sinned. we make [God a liar, and His word is not in us (I Jn 1:8-10).
Thus sacred Scriptures declare our guilt to be universal; hence the universal obligation to that repentance which Peter, in his sermon on Pentecost, declared necessary for the forgiveness of sin (Acts 2:38). Hence, too. the Church's constant recognition that all the faithful are required by divine law to do penance. As from the fact of sin we Christians can claims no exception so from the obligation to penance we can seek no exemption.

Forms and seasons of penance vary from time to time and from people to people. But the need for conversion and salvation is unchanging, as is the necessity that, confessing our sinfulness, we perform. personally and in community, acts of penance in pledge of our inward penitence and conversion.

For these reasons, Christian peoples, members of a Church that is at once holy, penitent, and always in process of renewal, have from the beginning observed seasons and days of penance. They have done so by community penitential observances as well as by personal acts of self-denial; they have imitated the example of the spotless Son of God himself, concerning who the sacred Scriptures tell us that he went into the desert to fast and to pray for forty days (Mk 1:13). Thus Christ gave the example to which Paul appealed in teaching us how we, too, must come to the mature measure of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4: 13).

Of the many penitential seasons which at one time or another have entered the liturgical calendar of Christians (who on this point have preserved the holy tradition of their Hebrew spiritual ancestors), three have particularly survived to our times: Advent, Lent, and the vigils of certain feasts.

Changing customs, especially in connection with preparation for Christmas, have diminished popular appreciation of the Advent season. Something of the holiday mood of Christmas appears now to be anticipated in the days of the Advent season. As a result, this season has unfortunately lost in great measure the role of penitential preparation for Christmas that is once had.

Zealous Christians have striven to keep alive or to restore the spirit of Advent by resisting the trend away from the disciplines and austerities that once characterized the season among us. Perhaps their devout purpose will be better accomplished, and the point of Advent will be better fostered if we rely on the liturgical renewal and the new emphasis on the liturgy to restore its deeper understanding as a season of effective preparation for the mystery of the Nativity.

For these reasons, we the shepherds of souls of this conference. call upon Catholics to make the Advent season, beginning with 1966, a time of meditation on the lessons taught by the liturgy and of increased participation in the liturgical rites by which the Advent mysteries are exemplified and their sanctifying effect is accomplished.

If in all Christian homes, churches, schools, and retreat and other religious houses, liturgical observances are practices with fresh fervor and fidelity to the penitential spirit of the liturgy, then Advent will again come into its own. Its spiritual purpose will again be clearly perceived.

A rich literature concerning family and community liturgical observances appropriate to Advent has fortunately developed in recent years. We urge instruction based upon it, counting on the liturgical renewal of ourselves and our people to provide for our spiritual obligations with respect to this Lent has had a different history than Advent among us. Beginning with the powerful lesson of Ash Wednesday, it has retained its ancient appeal to the penitential spirit of our people. It has also acquired elements of popular piety which we bishops would wish to encourage.

Accordingly, while appealing for greater development of the understanding of the Lenten liturgy, as that of Advent, we hope that the observance of Lent as the principal season of penance in the Christian year will be intensified. This is the more desirable because of new insights into the central place in Christian faith of those Easter mysteries for the understanding and enjoyment of which Lent is the ancient penitential preparation.

Wherefore, we ask. urgently and prayerfully, that we, as people of God, make of the entire lenten season a period of special penitential observance. Following the instructions of the Holy See, we declare that the obligation both to fast and to abstain from meat, an obligation observed under a more strict formality by our fathers in the faith, still binds on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. No Catholic Christian will lightly excuse himself from so hallowed an obligation on the Wednesday which solemnly opens the Lenten season and on that Friday called "Good because on that day Christ suffered in the flesh and died for our sins.

In keeping with the letter and spirit of Pope Paul's constitution Paenitemini, we preserve for our dioceses the tradition of abstinence from meat on each of the Fridays of Lent, confident that no Catholic Christian will lightly hold himself excused from this penitential practice.

For all other weekdays of Lent, we strongly recommend participation in daily Mass and a self-imposed observance of fasting. In the light of grave human needs which weigh on the Christian conscience in all seasons, we urge particularly during Lent, generosity to local, national, and world programs of sharing of all things needed to translate our duty to penance into a means of implementing the right of the poor to their part in our abundance. We also recommend spiritual studies, beginning with the Scriptures as well as the traditional Lenten devotions (sermons, Stations of the Cross, and the Rosary) and all the self-denial summed up in the Christian concept of 'mortification."

Let us witness to our love and imitation of Christ, by special solicitude for the sick, the poor, the underprivileged, the imprisoned, the bed-ridden, the discouraged, the stranger, the lonely, and persons of other color, nationalities of background than our own. A catalogue of not merely suggested but required good works under these headings is provided by Our Blessed Lord himself in his description of the Last Judgment (cf Mt 25:3440). This salutary word of the Lord is necessary for all the year, but should be heeded with double care during Lent.

During the Lenten season. certain feasts occur which the liturgy or local custom traditionally exempts from the Lenten spirit of penance. The observance of these will continue to be set by local diocesan regulations; in these and like canonical questions. which may arise in connection with these pastoral instructions, reference should be made to Article VII of Paenitemini and the usual norms.

Vigils and Ember Days, as most now know, no longer oblige to fast and abstinence. However, the liturgical renewal and the deeper appreciation of the joy of the holy days of the Christian year will, we hope, result in a renewed appreciation as to why our forefathers spoke of "a fast before a feast." We impose no fast before any feastday, but we suggest that the devout will find greater Christian joy in the feasts of the liturgical calendar if they freely bind themselves, for their own motives and in their own spirit of piety, to prepare for each Church festival by a day of particular self-denial, penitential prayer, and fasting.

Christ died for our salvation on Friday.

Gratefully remembering this, Catholic peoples from time immemorial have set apart Friday for special penitential observance by which they gladly suffer with Christ that they may one day be glorified with him. This is the heart of the tradition of abstinence from meat on Friday where that tradition has been observed in the holy Catholic Church.

Changing circumstances, including economic, dietary, and social elements, have made some of our people feel that the renunciation of the eating of meat is not always and for everyone the most effective means of practicing penance. Meat was once an exceptional form of food now it is commonplace.

Accordingly, since the spirit of penance primarily suggests that we discipline ourselves in that which we enjoy most, to many in our day abstinence from meat no longer implies penance, while renunciation of other things would be more penitential.

For these and related reasons, the Catholic bishops of the United States, far from downgrading the traditional penitential observance of Friday, and motivated precisely by the desire to give the spirit of penance greater vitality, especially on Fridays, the day that Jesus died, urge our Catholic people henceforth to be guided by the following norms:

1. Friday itself remains a special day of penitential observance throughout the year, a time when those who seek perfection will be mindful of their personal sins and the sins of mankind which they are called upon to help expiate in union with Christ Crucified;

2. Friday should be in each week something of what Lent is in the entire year. For this reason we urge all to prepare for that weekly Easter that comes with each Sunday be freely making of every Friday a day of self-denial and mortification in prayerful remembrance of the passion of Jesus Christ;

3. Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance which we especially commend to our people for the future observance of Friday, even though we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence as binding under pain of sin, as the sole prescribed means of observing Friday, we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat. We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law. Our expectation is based on the following considerations;

a. We shall thus freely and out of love for Christ Crucified show our solidarity with the generations of believers to whom this practice frequently became, especially in times of persecution and of great poverty, no mean evidence of fidelity in Christ and his Church.

b. We shall thus also remind ourselves that as Christians, although immersed in the world and sharing its life, we must preserve a saving and necessary difference from the spirit of the world. Our deliberate, personal abstinence from meat, more especially because no longer required by law, will be an outward sign of inward spiritual values that we cherish.

Every Catholic Christian understand that the fast and abstinence regulations admit of change, unlike the commandments and precepts of that unchanging divine moral law which the Church must today and always defend as immutable. This said, we emphasize that our people are henceforth free from the obligation, traditionally binding, under pain of sin in what pertains to Friday abstinence, except as noted above for Lent. We stress this so that no scrupulosity will enter into examinations of conscience, confessions, or personal decisions on this point.

Perhaps we should warn those who decide to keep the Friday abstinence for reasons of personal piety and special love that they must not pass judgment on those who elect to substitute other penitential observances. Friday, please God, will acquire among us other forms of penitential witness which may become as much a pan of the devout way of life in the future as Friday abstinence from meat. In this connection we have foremost in mind the modern need for self-discipline in the use of stimulants and for a renewed emphasis on the virtue of temperance, especially in the use of alcoholic beverages.

It would bring great glory to God and good to souls if Fridays found our people doing volunteer work in hospitals, visiting the sick, serving the needs of the aged and the lonely, instructing the young in the faith, participating as Christians in community affairs, and meeting our obligations to our families, our friends, our neighbors, and our community, including our parishes, with a special zeal born of the desire to add the merit of penance to the other virtues exercised in good works born of living faith.

In summary, let it not be said that by this action, implementing the spirit of renewal coming out of the Council, we have abolished Friday, repudiated the holy traditions of our fathers, or diminished the insistence of the Church on the fact of sin and the need for penance. Rather, let it be proved by the spirit in which we enter upon prayer and penance, not excluding fast and abstinence freely chosen, that these present decisions and recommendations of this conference of bishops will herald a new birth loving faith and more profound penitential conversion, by both of which we become one with Christ, mature sons of God and servants of God's people."

May your Great Fast be blessed.
Prof. J. Michael Thompson
Byzantine Catholic Seminary
Pittsburgh, PA

Another reason why we in the Slavic countries of the Eastern Churches do not observe Ash Wendsday is, that the ashes are made from the blessed palms from the year before. Palm trees don't grow in Northern Europe.

Could they burn pussy willows for the ash? We do not have palms in Germany or Ohio, yet the ash was made somehow.