Form and Function. Today is traditionally known as Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a holiday which seeks to emphasize repentance during the 40 days (not including Sundays) leading up to Easter with fasting and prayer. Historically, participants would fast from one meal per day through Lent until Easter’s sunset as an act of penance. On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, worshipers abstain from meat in addition to the Lenten fast, as a form of sacrifice. Some extend the Good Friday rule to the whole year, abstaining from meat (but not fish) every Friday, a Catholic tradition but not a Catholic dogma. Modern forms of the Lenten fast abstain from something that is considered special to re-orient the soul to Christ. From the burned palm fronds which were distributed on last year’s Palm Sunday, priests or deacons use the ashes to mark the heads of worshipers, reminding them of their mortality and their need to make reconciliation with God while there is still time: “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15), “[Remember] you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).
All in all, disregarding the baggage of cultural expectations and the crippling flaw that doing penance earns merit with God, Ash Wednesday and Lent contain good ideas, especially considering that these traditions formed in times when illiteracy was much more common than literacy. Meaningful motions and vibrant object lessons annually reinforced memorable elements of the life and death of Christ for the population as teaching tools. The function of Ash Wednesday was undoubtedly for religious education of the masses, even those who were not church folks. But as often happens over time, form overshadows function.
Function is intangible, whereas form is enforceable. Function deals with the heart, which is hidden. Form deals with behavior, which is public. Form ultimately wins the day by smothering original function. Ash Wednesday went from being something we do to something we must do. Regulations heaped up over the years about whether the ashes were made from only last year’s palms, whether the ashes were mixed with holy water, whether the ashes were blessed with the correct words by the correct priests in the correct places, whether the ashes were placed as a dot, a smear, or a cross on the forehead, or the hand, or strewn all over the participant. Ash Wednesday crushed under its own weight. The value of ritual rests solely in what it signifies, not in how it signifies. It’s not ritual but Jesus who saves.