Most parishes instead distributed the ashes at their Saturday vigil Masses and regular Sunday Masses the weekend following Ash Wednesday.

In Auckland, within two hours of the announcement by the Prime Minister, Bishop Patrick Dunn sent out a message on social media.

He advised people that “all weekday and Ash Wednesday Masses are to be postponed in the Auckland region until at least Thursday” (February 18).

“Lent still begins next Wednesday, and although sadly we will not be able to attend Mass and receive ashes, we can still begin our usual prayerful Lenten observances,” the bishop said.

“Let us all keep each other in prayer, and be mindful of any people around us who may be in need of care and assistance in these coming days.”

Bishop Dunn had been scheduled to speak at an ecumenical service held at Holy Trinity Anglican cathedral on Ash Wednesday.

The service is held at either the Catholic or Anglican cathedral each year.

Auckland Anglican Bishop Ross Bay expressed his disappointment that this service could not take place on February 17.

Bishop Bay told NZ Catholic that: “I am very sad that our long-standing tradition of shared ecumenical worship to begin Lent cannot take place this year.

“It is a highlight for our cathedrals, and for many of our parishes who join together as neighbours on this day.

“I am hopeful that, at some point during Lent, we might still be able to come together in worship to acknowledge the 40-day journey we are on as disciples together in Christ.”

New Zealand’s Catholic bishops met online on the morning of February 15 to discuss the ramifications of the changed alert levels.

According to an NZCBC statement issued after the meeting, the first concern of the bishops is the safety of people in parishes, and an acknowledgement that differing alert levels apply to Auckland and elsewhere.

In Auckland, in level 3, no public gatherings are allowed, other than funerals, tangihanga and weddings, with no more than 10 people present.

Elsewhere, in level 2, religious services can take place, but with no more than 100 people present.

Appropriate social distancing and associated measures are also mandated.

The bishops’ statement continued: “Given that these restrictions apply till midnight on Wednesday (Ash Wednesday), but could quickly change, the bishops decided to leave decisions on whether Mass is celebrated outside Auckland to each bishop, diocese and parish as appropriate.”

The bishops said they could meet again later in the week, pending further Government announcements.

As NZ Catholic was going to press, notices were coming out from some dioceses about plans that had been put in place.

In Wellington, Cardinal John Dew wrote to parishes and schools that the same procedure would apply as the last time the archdiocese was in level 2.

Until further notice, there were to be no Masses or other liturgical events or parish gatherings in the archdiocese. This includes weekday Masses and Ash Wednesday Masses or liturgies in Catholic churches.

“If your parish planned to participate in an ecumenical service in one of your parish’s churches, it is not to take place in that venue,” Cardinal Dew wrote.

“If the other denominations participating wish to go ahead with an ecumenical service in their church, Catholics are free to make their own decision about joining them.”

The cardinal added that, if the alert level went back to level 1 on the night of February 17, then “we will look at having the blessing and distribution of the ashes at Masses next Sunday”.

“In the meantime, it may be helpful if you are able to get a message out to your parishioners to encourage them to do something at home to mark Ash Wednesday, to pray with the Scriptures, and find ways to mark the beginning of Lent in their homes,” Cardinal Dew added.

In Christchurch, apostolic administrator Archbishop Paul Martin asked that there be no public Ash Wednesday liturgies this year.

Archbishop Martin acknowledged this would be a source of sadness, but he encouraged people to begin a time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving in Lent.

A short prayer resource was to be published and sent out to parishes, to be made available for people if they call into the church or for use at home.

Weekday Masses on the other days of this week were to continue in Christchurch diocese if current alert level settings continued as they were on February 15.

“If we remain at Level 2 after Wednesday, we will offer the online booking system for Sunday Masses as has been done previously,” Archbishop Martin said.

In Dunedin diocese, Bishop Michael Dooley wrote, in a letter to school principals and priests, that “parishes are to judge whether it may be necessary to cancel liturgies or Masses due to numbers”.

“This restriction means most schools will not be able to join with parishes for Ash Wednesday, but will be able to hold their own school liturgy,” Bishop Dooley wrote.

He added that, on Ash Wednesday, “we will follow the recent instruction from the Vatican and not have physical imposition of the ashes on the forehead. There can be a sprinkling of ashes, but no physical contact”.

The bishop noted that Lent is a time of penance and reflection, and, while “the pandemic is disrupting, it can draw us closer to God, as we act together for the common good”.

In Hamilton diocese, Bishop Stephen Lowe wrote that priests will make decisions on “what your parish can offer on Ash Wednesday”.

The bishop asked for patience.

“Where there are no Ash Wednesday Masses, I have asked that the ashes be made available this Sunday (February 21)”, Bishop Lowe added.

He also wrote that ashes will be sprinkled on heads, rather than imposed on foreheads, in line with a procedure from the Vatican for this time of pandemic.

“So, as we begin Lent, let us be mindful, not only of our own sins, but also of the fragility of our lives and the lives of our brothers and sisters throughout the world,” Bishop Lowe wrote.

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Ucanews.com reported the Cebu Archdiocese in the central Philippines released a prayer guide on February 10 for the celebration of Ash Wednesday at home for those unable to go to church due to Covid-19 restrictions. Children and elderly people are disqualified by government protocols to attend large gatherings such as those in churches.

“Those who cannot come to church on this day can join the celebration of the Mass of Ash Wednesday on a live TV broadcast or livestreaming,” the archdiocese said.

The head of the family would lead the entire family in prayer according to the guidelines. After the prayers, the family member should sprinkle ashes on the head of each person in the home to avoid contact with them. Families would conclude the celebration with a prayer and the sign of the cross.

Ucanews.com reported the diocese posted links to the prayer guide on social media.

Cebu Archdiocese also reminded Catholics that Ash Wednesday was a day of fasting and abstinence.

Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma said the Lenten season is the time for Catholics to deepen their relationship with Jesus.

“It is Jesus who calls us to be his followers, so that people may know that we have a loving and caring God,” Archbishop Palma said in a recent homily.

Local Catholics said the archdiocese was offering a practical solution to limitations being imposed by the pandemic, ucanews.com reported.

“This is a new way of marking the beginning of Lent. People usually flock to churches, but the pandemic has made Ash Wednesday different this year, so this is a good way to prevent the spread of Covid-19,” said Frances Cespon of Cebu.

The Philippine bishops’ conference allowed another deviation from Ash Wednesday norms for those who do wish to go to church. It said people would be allowed to use any dried plant or tree leaves in place of old palm leaves to make ashes.

Normally, the ashes come from old palm leaves used during Palm Sunday celebrations the previous year, but there is a shortage this year because of Covid-19 restrictions imposed last year.

(CNS Photo)

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New Zealand’s bishops, though, are closely monitoring the situation, as new Covid-19 cases have emerged in Northland and Auckland. On January 29, when NZ Catholic went to press, the bishops declined to make a statement, pending further development, NZ Catholic was told.

The congregation gave the procedure as a special anti-Covid-19 precaution. This was contained in a note published on the congregation’s website on January 12.

Before the new cases were made public, Siobhan Dilly, executive officer of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, told NZ Catholic: “As New Zealand does not have community transmission, the bishops agreed they will not require priests to follow the Congregation’s note regarding the distribution of Ashes.”

In a January 29 media conference, Minister for Covid-19 Response Chris Hipkins announced there were no further new cases in the community to that point. The transmissions of the three cases in the community came in MIQ.

The congregation’s note said that, in the procedure set out, the priests are not to say anything while they are sprinkling the ashes.

Beforehand, the priests are to say either “Repent and believe in the Gospel”, or “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return”, once only to all assembled.

With the country being in lockdown on Palm Sunday last year, NZ Catholic asked several priests what they intend to use to make the ashes this year.

The priests said that they have enough palms to make blessed ashes.

“While there were no public Masses on Palm Sunday 2020, we offered blessed palms to our parishioners to pick up from outside the closed front doors of the church. Hopefully, some parishioners will bring their palm back for burning; but we have left-over palms we can use as well,” said Msgr David Tonks, parish priest of St Joseph’s parish in Takapuna.

Wellington’s Sacred Heart Cathedral parish priest Fr David Dowling said that “we have made ashes from blessed palms, which were available from the previous year”.

The post Covid situation being monitored ahead of Ash Wednesday appeared first on NZ Catholic Newspaper.

“Lent is the time to say no to the asphyxia born of relationships that exclude, that try to find God while avoiding the wounds of Christ present in the wounds of his brothers and sisters,” the pope said March 1 during an Ash Wednesday Mass.

Pope Francis celebrated the Mass after making the traditional Ash Wednesday procession from the Benedictine monastery of St. Anselm to the Dominican-run Basilica of Santa Sabina on Rome’s Aventine Hill.

After receiving ashes on top of his head from Cardinal Jozef Tomko, titular cardinal of the basilica, the pope distributed ashes to the cardinals, his closest aides, some Benedictines and Dominicans.

He also distributed ashes to a family and to two members of the Pontifical Academy for Martyrs, which promotes the traditional Lenten “station church” pilgrimage in Rome.

Lent, he said, is a time to say “no” to “all those forms of spirituality that reduce the faith to a ghetto culture, a culture of exclusion.”

The church’s Lenten journey toward the celebration of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection is made on a road “leading from slavery to freedom” and “from suffering to joy,” he said. “Lent is a path: It leads to the triumph of mercy over all that would crush us or reduce us to something unworthy of our dignity as God’s children.”

The ashes, while a symbol of humanity’s origin from the earth, the pope said, is also a reminder that God breathes new life into people in order to save them from the suffocation of “petty ambition” and “silent indifference.”

“The breath of God’s life sets us free from the asphyxia that so often we fail to notice or become so used to that it seems normal, even when its effects are felt,” the pope said.

The Lenten season, he continued, is a “time for saying no” to the asphyxia caused by superficial and simplistic analyses that “fail to grasp the complexity of problems” of those who suffer most.

“Lent is the time to say no to the asphyxia of a prayer that soothes our conscience, of an almsgiving that leaves us self-satisfied, of a fasting that makes us feel good,” the pope said.

Instead, Pope Francis said, Lent is a time for Christians to remember God’s mercy and “not the time to rend our garments before evil but rather make room in our life for the good we are able to do.”

“Lent is the time to start breathing again. It is the time to open our hearts to the breath of the One capable of turning our dust into humanity,” the pope said.

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WASHINGTON (CNS) — In more ways than one, Ash Wednesday — celebrated March 1 this year — leaves a mark.

That’s because not only are Catholics marked with a sign of penitence with ashes on their foreheads, but the rich symbolism of the rite itself draws Catholics to churches in droves even though it is not a holy day of obligation and ashes do not have to be distributed during a Mass.

Almost half of adult Catholics, 45 percent, typically receive ashes — made from the burned and blessed palms of the previous year’s Palm Sunday — at Ash Wednesday services, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

Parish priests say they get more people at church that day than almost any other — excluding Christmas and Easter — and the congregations are usually much bigger than for Holy Thursday or Good Friday services.

“Virtually every parish that I’ve worked with will have more people come to Ash Wednesday than almost any other celebration,” said Thomas Humphries, assistant professor of philosophy, theology and religion at St. Leo University in St. Leo, Florida.

“We talk about Christmas and Easter as certainly being the most sacred and most attended events during the year, but Ash Wednesday is not even a day of obligation. In terms of liturgical significance, it’s very minor, but people observe it as overwhelmingly important,” he said in a Feb. 17 email to Catholic News Service.

Humphries said part of the Ash Wednesday draw is the “genuine human recognition of the need to repent and the need to be reminded of our own mortality. Having someone put ashes on your head and remind you ‘we are dust and to dust we shall return’ is an act of humility.”

He also said the day — which is the start of Lent in the Latin Church — reminds people that they are not always who they should be and it is a chance to “stand together with people and be reminded of our frailty and brokenness and of our longing to do better.”

“This practice is particularly attractive to us today because it is an embodied way to live out faith, to witness to Christian identity in the world, ” said Timothy O’Malley, director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame, where he also is a professor of New Testament and early Christianity.

He said that’s the only way to explain why millions of people identify themselves “as mortal sinners for an entire day.”

Jesuit Father Bruce Morrill, the Edward A. Malloy professor of Catholic studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee, thinks the appeal of Ash Wednesday is partly because participants receive a “marker of identity” as Catholics.

The day also has rich symbolism, he said, of both flawed humanity and mortality. He pointed out that even though a large percentage of Catholics do not go to confession they will attend this very penitential service because they “get a sense of repentance and a kind of solidarity in it.”

“Clearly it touches on a deep sense of Catholic tradition in a way few other symbols do,” he told CNS Feb. 17.

For many, it also links them to childhood tradition of getting ashes. It also links them, even if they are unaware of its origins, to an ancient church tradition.

The priest said the use of ashes goes back to Old Testament times when sackcloth and ashes were worn as signs of penance. The church incorporated this practice in the eighth century when those who committed grave sins known to the public had to do public penitence, sprinkled with ashes. But by the Middle Ages, the practice of penance and marking of ashes became something for the whole church.

Ash Wednesday also is one of two days, along with Good Friday, that are obligatory days of fasting and abstinence for Catholic adults — meaning no eating meat and eating only one full meal and two smaller meals.

The other key aspect of the day is that it is the start of the 40 days of prayer, fasting and almsgiving of Lent.

“Ash Wednesday can be a little bit like New Year’s Day,” Father Mike Schmitz, chaplain for Newman Catholic Campus Ministries at the University of Minnesota Duluth, told CNS in an email. He said the day gives Catholics “a place to clearly begin something new that we know we need to do.”

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WASHINGTON (CNS) — Ash Wednesday seems to offer contradictory messages. The Gospel reading for the day is about not doing public acts of piety but the very act of getting ashes — and walking around with them — is pretty public.

This becomes even less of a private moment when people post pictures of themselves online with their ashes following the #ashtag trend of recent years.

The online posting of one’s ashes, often marked in the form of a cross on the forehead, thrills some people and disappoints others. Some say it diminishes the significance and penitent symbol of the ashes with their somber reminder that humans are made from dust and one day will return to dust.

Others say that sharing the Ash Wednesday experience with the broader, virtual public makes it more communal and also is a way to evangelize. Those who aren’t on either side of the argument say it all comes down to why it’s done, if the ashes selfies are posted for personal attention or to highlight the day’s message.

A few years ago when this trend was just getting started, Jesuit Father James Martin, now editor-at-large at the Catholic weekly magazine America, said only the person posting knows if it is being done for the right reasons. “As with most things in life, you need a sense of moderation and only a person’s conscience can tell them why they’re posting these things,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

Julianne Stanz, director of new evangelization for the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin, similarly said people should pause and pray before posting ashes selfies, but then go ahead and do it.

She noted that this goes against the notion that Catholics should practice their faith quietly and in private.

“But make no mistake about it: Faith, while personal, is not solely meant to be a private affair,” she wrote in a column for The Compass, Green Bay’s diocesan newspaper, last Lent. “Ash Wednesday is a day when we literally wear our faith on our forehead.”

“We become, on this day, a visual extension of the love of Christ — a love which transcends time and distance, whether in the real world or the virtual world,” she added.

Stanz also pointed out that for millennials — the group most likely to observe Lenten practices, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University — “the digital space is an extension of their world and so posting an image after receiving ashes seems natural.”

“Life doesn’t stop after we receive ashes. We go about our daily lives — we wear our ashes at the grocery store, when picking up our children from school and at home gathered around the family table. Wearing ashes in the real and virtual world is about harmonizing who we are as people of faith. If we wear them in the ‘real’ world, then we should also wear them in cyberspace,” she said.

Stanz told Catholic News Service in a Feb. 22 email that her column “To ashtag or not to ashtag” was one of the most popular ones she has written, and it generated a lot of dialogue on social media and with people who got in touch with her to share their story.

A number of Catholic groups has urged people to post their Ash Wednesday photos online. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had been doing this until two years ago.

A leader at Life Teen, a ministry to Catholic teenagers, which also has highlighted the #ashtag trend, said receiving ashes and posting pictures of them is a way to recognize and share our need for God.

“By receiving ashes, we’re claiming our own sinfulness, brokenness, and need for God, with an outward sign,” said Leah Murphy, coordinator of digital evangelization and outreach at Life Teen in Mesa, Arizona.

In an email to CNS, she said posting Ash Wednesday photos on social media, where so many people connect, is a way to “invite the secular culture to see the church as she is — a broken community in need of a God that can heal and save.”

“Making use of the digital medium simply makes it possible to broaden the reach of the Gospel message,” she said.

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