Hi joynetters, To understand the reason for celebrating ash wednesday and ash monday we have to study the history of the church.. The church in the early days was distributed in structure and was mainly centered around three places.. Rome, antioch in syria and constantinople ..The church grew and was established during the roman empire.. Constantine gave credibility to the christian religion and stopped the persecution that his predeccesors had begun. But after constantine the roman empire became weaker and slowly there was a split in the roman empire, west and east.. each of these centres by then had developed their own liturgy ,their own scriptures etc. their own hierarchy also. this is around 300 A.D. Till then there was no bible as such.. the bible was compiled much later around 450 a.d at the time of st. augustine hence we have the two major groups among the older churches... The Roman catholic church whose head is the pope and the Orthodox church whose head is the patriach. The orthodox churches have several types.. greek , syrian, russian, armenian etc. the syro-malabar and the malankara rites of the catholic church are very old churches in their own right and have developed traditions of their own.. which are derived from the syrian liturgy.. But they are affiliated to the Bishop of Rome that is the Pope... Hence you will find that the latin rite will celebrate some feasts on a different day and the syro-malabar rite will celebrate on different days.. Ash monday and ash wednesday are also according to same lines. The orthodox churches dont consider sundays in lent as part of lent.. so to account for 40 days fasting during lent, they begin from monday which is also the start of the week..and hence the right time to begin anything..according to them.. It doesnt matter how many days we observe in lent.. what matters is how well do we observe the season of lent.. does it lead us to examine our lives.. love and prayers Ravi jannet fernandez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Hi, It would be helpful is somebody can throw light on this. Atleast we can know how the Ash Wednesday and Ash Monday came into the Catholic chruch. Also while attending SM mass I have often heard my priest saying " The Latin Catholic church is celebrating so and so feast today". Why such differences within the catholic chruch itself? All through my life I was under the impression that the catholic church was divided into MC, SC and LC based on caste differences. But now I feel there are more differences. Please do help us. Love in Jesus, Jannet
joseph john wrote:Primeson, I too had the same doubt long time ago, but I forgot about it. But yesterday while we went for the Holy mass in our Parish, the parish priest said the same explanation during the homily, as ur friend said. The English priest was telling that in olden days Sunday was not counted as a fasting day. So counting the days from Wednesday to the Easter Saturday it comes to 40 days. But Iam not sure of the Ash Monday. love n prayers Joseph / Crawley / U.K ----- Original Message ----- Wrom: AUTFJMVRESKPNKMBIPBARHDMNNSKVFVWRKJVZCMHVIBGDAD Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 23:50:24 -0600 To: Subject: [JOYnet] Ash Wednesday & Ash Monday My friend raised me a question, but I do not know the answer, therefore I seek your answer on this. _____ i have a doubt.. y is tht we SM have Ash Monday and the Latins have Ash Wednesday.... y'day one friend who goes to Latin church asked me y u SM christians have Ash Monday instead of Ash Wednesday.... i said to her that fasting starts with the starting of the week... and i told her sunday is the starting of the week but since it is the Lord's day.. after midnight the fasting starts.... tht was an escape answer for the time being which i gave..... but.. i want to know the exact answer i asked my friend.. if we count the no. days for fasting from Ash Wednesday it comes to 45 days.. to which she said that in olden days sunday was not counted for fasting.. but was feasting day... so if we excluded the 5 sundays.. it comes to 40 days.... and we SM christians have 50 days while the others say 40 days fast... y the difference.... i counted the days from Ash Monday to Good friday and it comes to 47days.. then y it is said ambadh noyambh (50 days fasting)... Biji Thomas / Mumbai _____ love & prayers primeson / dubai =============================================================================== This mail is generated from JOYnet, a Jesus Youth mailing list. For more info on the list visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet To unsubscribe from the list send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the list visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet/join In case of any issue related to the mailing list contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] =============================================================================== -- _______________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup Meet Singles http://corp.mail.com/lavalife =============================================================================== This mail is generated from JOYnet, a Jesus Youth mailing list. For more info on the list visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet To unsubscribe from the list send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the list visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet/join In case of any issue related to the mailing list contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] =============================================================================== --------------------------------- With Yahoo! Mail you can get a bigger mailbox -- choose a size that fits your needs =============================================================================== This mail is generated from JOYnet, a Jesus Youth mailing list. For more info on the list visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet To unsubscribe from the list send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the list visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet/join In case of any issue related to the mailing list contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] =============================================================================== --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more =============================================================================== This mail is generated from JOYnet, a Jesus Youth mailing list. For more info on the list visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet To unsubscribe from the list send a mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the list visit http://www.jesusyouth.org/joynet/join In case of any issue related to the mailing list contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ===============================================================================
