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Ash Wednesday
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...
Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return
I didn't know that Vespers was the first service of the new day instead of the last. I didn't know about the Feast of the Holy Name, either, but my flavor of Protestantism doesn't really do feasts, saint days, etc.
Re: Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return
As to Vespers, it is even odder sometimes, in that it's both the first service of the new day and the last service of the old. On very high feast days, there are services called I Vespers and II Vespers (read "first Vespers" and "second Vespers"). Ron tells me it used to be even more complicated, before they "reformed" the breviary...