the encroachment of ashes and ordinary days?

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ycwhn - 11 Jan 2004 15:23 GMT

Hi.
I'm reading a book related to Christianity, but I found I cannot
understand there. I have no idea about the phrase of 'the encroachment
of ashes' in the following passage. Can you explain it to me in
details? If possible, please send your reply to my email address,
<ycwhn@hotmail.com>, I'm not pressing you too much.
I cannot thank you for your kindness too much, too.

1) Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts for 40 days, excluding
Sundays, until Easter day. The season begins with the encroachment of
ashes, a practice reclaimed from the historic church by many in
contemporary worship.

2) P.S. I have one more thing to ask you. In the passage below, I'd
like to make it clear what the 'ordinary days' means. Can you help me
with that, too?
The Day of Pentecost is a celebration of the birth of the church and
the coming of the Holy Spirit... We call the days of Pentecost
"ordinary days" -- routine days during which we experience growth and
development.

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Alan Jones - 11 Jan 2004 16:03 GMT

> Hi.
> I'm reading a book related to Christianity, but I found I cannot
> understand there. I have no idea about the phrase of 'the encroachment
> of ashes' in the following passage. Can you explain it to me in
> details? If possible, please send your reply to my email address,

We don't usually reply to individuaks - by making an enquiry of this
discussioin group you are inviting a public response.

> 1) Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and lasts for 40 days, excluding
> Sundays, until Easter day. The season begins with the encroachment of
> ashes, a practice reclaimed from the historic church by many in
> contemporary worship.

This refers to what is usually called the Imposition of Ashes, a ceremony
where ashes are smeared on the worshippers' foreheads, symbolising their
rejection of the world's vanities. The word "encroachment" doesn't seem to
make sense and must surely be some kind of misprint or misreading.

> 2) P.S. I have one more thing to ask you. In the passage below, I'd
> like to make it clear what the 'ordinary days' means. Can you help me
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> "ordinary days" -- routine days during which we experience growth and
> development.

The church year starts with Advent Sunday and moves through various other
seasons, leading eventually to Pentecost (traditionally in England called
"Whitsunday"). The Sundays after that are all in a single long season until
Advent comes round again. Those Sundays and the weeks that follow them are
"ordinary time" rather than special festive or penitential seasons. The
Sundays are numbered as "The 15th Sunday after Pentecost" or just "Pentecost
15". There is also a short period of ordinary time between Epiphany and
Lent.

Until recently, the Anglican Church (and some others) added one further
Great Festival - Trinity Sunday, the one after Pentecost - with all the
following Sundays being numbered as e.g "The 14th Sunday after Trinity", or
just "Trinity 14". Trinity Sunday is still celebrated, but the Sundays are
nevertheless numbered as "after Pentecost".

Vestments and altar frontals are changed in colour according to the season:
e.g. Pentecost is red, ordinary time is green, unless some saint's day
requires a temporary change.

Alan Jones

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Harvey Van Sickle - 11 Jan 2004 16:09 GMT

On 11 Jan 2004, Alan Jones wrote

-snip-

> Until recently, the Anglican Church (and some others) added one
> further Great Festival - Trinity Sunday, the one after Pentecost -
> with all the following Sundays being numbered as e.g "The 14th
> Sunday after Trinity", or just "Trinity 14". Trinity Sunday is
> still celebrated, but the Sundays are nevertheless numbered as
> "after Pentecost".

That's interesting: do you know when they did that? And why?

(It was "after Trinity" in my church-going days in Canada -- but that's
30 or 35 years ago...)

Signature

Cheers, Harvey

Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 21 years.
(for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs)

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Alan Jones - 11 Jan 2004 22:10 GMT

> On 11 Jan 2004, Alan Jones wrote
>
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> (It was "after Trinity" in my church-going days in Canada -- but that's
> 30 or 35 years ago...)

I don't know when or why. I've only recently (four or five years ago)
started going to church again, having been pressganged into becoming
choirmaster of a neighbouring parish, but suppose it was when, following
Vatican II and the RC adoption of a vernacular liturgy, pretty well all the
main-stream churches in England rewrote and closely aligned their orders of
service and calendars. I play the organ occasionally for RC funerals, and
find that the words, ritual and vestments for the memorial Mass match almost
exactly our ordinary C of E Eucharist, give or take a Hail Mary or two. I
can join in without a book, anyway! Musically the notable change was
bringing back the Gloria from near the end of the service, where the 16th
century Reformers put it, to near the beginning; the trad. settings by
Stanford et al. now sound too triumphantly conclusive for their place in the
new service. A time-travelling Reformer would be appalled: he would
recognise our Sunday morning service as effectively a revival of the
proscribed medieval Mass, though in English and with congregational
participation.

The new "after Pentecost" numbering system is used, locally at least, by the
Methodists as well as the RCs and Anglicans.

Alan Jones

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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

the encroachment of ashes and ordinary days?