What’s that on your forehead?
Pictured, Monk’s skulls in the charnel house at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai.
On Ash Wednesday, many people walk around with black crosses on their foreheads. It reminds me of monk’s skulls, sometimes marked with a cross. In Europe, the skulls are marked with crosses and the date of death. In Churches throughout the world, ashes are imposed as a sign of penance and a reminder of death
Some of the people I saw today looked as if the priest had been somewhat overzealous and nearly covered their entire forehead. Others had perfectly symmetrical crosses, marked very neat and clean. A couple had neat little ”dot” crosses. When I was young, that’s how the priests always did it. Nowadays, with lay people distributing ashes, depending upon their seriousness and perhaps fervor, the ashes seem to be more pronounced.
In Europe, the custom remains to sprinkle the ashes over the bowed head, just as it is done in many monastic communities. Someone told me that in Puerto Rico people receive the mark of ashes, yet brush them away on their return to their pew. (I usually wipe them away before I leave Church. As everyone who knows me knows, I think it looks dumb.)
However, it is a good witness to walk around with ashes on your forehead all day. It makes people think. It reminds people Lent has started.
Nevertheless, I had this irresistable urge to wipe them off people today, or to ask, “What’s on your forehead?” (Within seconds, I recalled they were wearing their ashes.) One woman had ashes on her nose, and I so wanted to tell her to clean up. All day, I was surprised to see the same people still had their ashes on their foreheads.
It’s one of the ironies of our religion. Today’s Gospel clearly instructs us:
“When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites. They neglect their appearance, so that they may appear to others to be fasting. I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to be fasting, except to your Father who is hidden…” - Matthew 6
A friend from Europe told me it is an American tradition to wear ashes on the forehead. I imagine they do it in Canada as well. (Although - I wouldn’t be surprised if the ashes on the forehead thing isn’t something the Irish came up with.)
When I was in Catholic school, the nuns told us it was a sin to brush them off. It’s not.
