Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent — the forty-day season of penitence, fasting, and prayer in preparation for Easter. The forty days (not counting Sundays, which are never fast days) recall Christ's forty-day fast in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–2, Luke 4:1–2), as well as the forty days of Moses on Sinai (Exodus 34:28) and Elijah's journey to Horeb (1 Kings 19:8). The Lenten fast itself is ancient: the Council of Nicaea (325, Canon 5) references a pre-Easter penitential period as an already-established institution, and by the late fourth century a forty-day fast before Easter was observed across both East and West, though the method of counting varied. The specific association of the fast's opening day with ashes developed in the Western church. The use of ashes as a sign of penitence is deeply rooted in the Old Testament: Job repented 'in dust and ashes' (Job 42:6), Mordecai covered himself in sackcloth and ashes (Esther 4:1), and Daniel prayed 'with fasting and sackcloth and ashes' (Daniel 9:3). The prophet Joel's call — 'rend your hearts and not your garments' (Joel 2:13) — is the appointed Old Testament reading for the day and its theological keynote. The imposition of ashes on the heads of public penitents is attested in the Roman Rite from the seventh century. The Gelasian Sacramentary includes prayers for the penitential rite at the start of Lent, and the practice of marking penitents with ashes before their exclusion from the congregation during Lent is documented in Carolingian sources. By the tenth or eleventh century, the rite was extended from public penitents to the whole congregation — a development that reflects the Lenten theology of universal need for repentance. The words spoken at imposition, 'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return' (Genesis 3:19), connect Ash Wednesday to the deepest stratum of biblical anthropology: the mortality that entered through the Fall and the dust from which humanity was fashioned.

The Ash Wednesday liturgy carries a remarkable pastoral directness. The BCP 2019 opens with an 'Invitation to a Holy Lent' that recounts the early Church's Lenten practices — preparation of catechumens for baptism and reconciliation of notorious sinners — and then applies them to the whole congregation: 'I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent.' The imposition of ashes is understood as occurring in the same sign as baptism: the forehead marked with ash in the shape of the Cross echoes the baptismal signing, but now with the dust of mortality rather than the water of new life. The BCP's introductory essay makes this connection explicit. The day is, with Good Friday, one of only two days the BCP appoints for total abstinence and fasting — a distinction that underscores its severity. The Litany of Penitence, a corporate confession expanding on the General Confession, is proper to Ash Wednesday and draws the congregation into specific acknowledgment of sin under multiple categories. The tradition of 'giving up something for Lent' — now often accompanied by 'taking on' a discipline of prayer or service — descends from the ancient Lenten fast, though in significantly softened form. The Eastern churches begin their Great Lent on Clean Monday rather than Wednesday, and do not practice the imposition of ashes, making Ash Wednesday a distinctly Western observance. The Anglican tradition inherited it at the Reformation: the 1549 BCP included a 'Commination against Sinners' for Ash Wednesday that was gradually softened in later editions, and the imposition of ashes, dropped in 1552, was restored in the twentieth century and is now standard in ACNA practice. The custom of burning the previous year's palm branches to produce the ashes — well established by the medieval period — creates a beautiful liturgical cycle linking Palm Sunday and Ash Wednesday.

Absalom Jones was born enslaved in Delaware in 1746. His early life is documented through his own testimony in petitions and the records of the Free African Society. As a young man, Jones purchased his own freedom through savings and labor. He became a lay preacher and community organizer among Philadelphia's free and enslaved African population. In 1787, with Richard Allen (later founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church), Jones co-founded the Free African Society, one of the first mutual aid and benevolent societies for African Americans in the nation. During the devastating yellow fever epidemic of 1793–1794, Jones and Allen led the relief efforts, as documented in their co-authored *Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia*. Rather than retreat, the Free African Society's members remained in the city to nurse the sick, establishing their leadership in the community. From this work emerged the founding of St. Thomas's African Episcopal Church in 1794, which they initially planned as a Methodist society but which ultimately became an independent Episcopal parish when Jones was ordained a deacon in 1795 and priest in 1802. Jones served as St. Thomas's rector until his death in 1818, ministering to a growing congregation of free African Americans. His ordination was historic: he was the first person of African descent to be ordained a priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church, preceding Absalom's own death by sixteen years the ordination of George Freeman Bragg Jr. (who became the church's first African-American priest-historian). Jones advocated for the abolition of slavery, including through a petition to Congress in 1799, though his primary ministry focused on pastoral care and the establishment of an independent Black Anglican community. His Thanksgiving sermon of 1808, marking the abolition of the slave trade (though not slavery itself), was published and demonstrates his active engagement with moral questions of the day.

Traditionally, Absalom Jones is venerated as the founder of the African American Episcopal priesthood and as a pioneer of Black Anglican identity distinct from African Methodism. He is remembered for his prophetic stand against slavery—petitioning Congress by name—and for his extraordinary pastoral courage during the yellow fever crisis. The Free African Society, though not exclusively Anglican, is understood in retrospect as having given birth to Black Anglicanism in America through Jones's choice to remain within the Episcopal polity while Allen moved to Methodism. His commitment to education and moral formation of his community, evident in his ordination sermons and charges, established a model for African American Anglican ministry.