2. Where to find One Who will save us from this awful condition, in Jesus Christ healing and enlightening us through and in His Church.
3. The holy zeal and perseverance with which we should seek and call upon Him for deliverance, disregarding alike the bad examples, persecutions, and mockery of the world.
4. How fervently we should thank God, and how faithfully we should follow Him, after He has opened the eyes of our soul and freed us, by His grace, from the spiritual blindness of sin.
Ash Wednesday
Why is this day so called?
Because on this day the Catholic Church blesses ashes and puts them on the foreheads of the faithful, saying, "Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Gen. iii. 19).
Why are the ashes blessed?
1. That all who receive them with a contrite heart may be preserved in soul and body. 2. That God may give them contrition, and pardon their sins. 3. That He may grant them all they humbly ask for, particularly the grace to do penance, and the reward promised to the truly penitent.
Why are the faithful sprinkled with ashes?
The sprinkling with ashes was always a public sign of penance; as such God enjoined it upon the Israelites (Jer. xxv. 34). David sprinkled ashes on his bread (Ps. ci. 10). The Ninivites (Jonas iii. 6), Judith (Jud. ix. 1), Mardochai (Esther iv. 1), Job (xlii. 6), and others, did penance in sack-cloth and ashes.
To show the spirit of penance and to move God to mercy, the Church, at the Introit of the Mass, uses the following words: "Thou hast mercy upon all, O Lord, and hatest none of the things which Thou hast made, and winkest at the sins of men for the sake of repentance, and sparing them, for Thou art the Lord our God " (Wis. xi. 24, 25). " Have mercy on me, O God, for my soul trusteth in Thee." Glory be to the Father, etc.
