Ash Wednesday

[klsiegel320]

So, the season changes. The long winter begins to give way to spring, to new life, to new hope, to new growth. New things to learn, new things to try, new paths to travel. I love the closing of the Epiphany season in the Monastic Breviary - except of course that in a strange way, it's really the opening of the Lenten season. The service of Vespers on the Tuesday evening before Ash Wednesday closes with verse and response from the Easter season:

V: Let us bless the Lord, alleluia, alleluia!

R: Thanks be to God, alleluia, alleluia!

It stands like a friend in the doorway, waving good-bye as you drive away on a long journey - knowing that you will return home again, at the end. We are not sent comfortless into the desert; we are sent with the Easter alleluia still ringing in our ears.

Of course, the fascinating thing is that Vespers is the first office of the monastic day. This makes perfect sense; our ancestors in the faith were Jews, and in Jewish religious practice all days begin at sunset (specifically, when it is dark enough for three stars to be seen). So of course when they began to worship in this new way, they kept many of the things they already knew - the psalms, the readings from the Torah and the Prophets, the prayers at certain times of day.

So Vespers is the beginning of the new day. We still have vestiges of this: Christmas Eve, for example; and New Year's Eve (which was originally the eve of the day celebrating the circumcision of Jesus, now modestly (or perhaps prudishly) renamed the Feast of the Holy Name).

Vespers on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, therefore, is the first service of the first day of Lent. But it closes with the Easter shout: Alleluia, alleluia! I just love that!

More later, on some other things; I'd really rather spend some more time writing, but I have this work to do that they're actually paying me for...