The last in-person service at downtown’s Christ Church Cathedral before COVID-19 forced the world to stop was the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.
“I have heard people say, ‘I went to get my ashes on Ash Wednesday and never got to go back to church,’” the Rev. Becky Zartman said.
For Christians, the cross in ashes on their foreheads is a symbol of death and repentance. Ash Wednesday also heralds Lent, the 40-day period of penance, prayer and self-denial that leads up to Easter.
“It’s a time of reconciliation, a time for people to prepare for resurrection,” Zartman said. “It’s also a time when the things in our lives that separate us from God need to die.”
In a normal year, the congregation’s dean, the Very Rev. Barkley Thompson, explained, the focus rests on mortality. Giving up something for Lent is also a common practice.
“But this is not a usual year,” Thompson said. “We have been reminded of our mortality for the past 365 days.”
The coronavirus, which appeared in the U.S. along with the Lenten season, made death and sickness a daily headline — and sacrifice a routine occurrence.
“Lent really, in a way, didn’t end,” Thompson said.
This year, he is pointing members to other Lent themes — hope, faith and grace.
“If we dive deeply enough into Ash Wednesday, we get beyond our mortality to that deeper eternal life and our dependence upon God,” Thompson said.
Zartman added she personally will be intentional about spending the 40 days of repentance in meditation on God’s grace.
“If we live that way, if we lean into Lent this year, even if we don’t want to, that’s an opportunity to recapture joy — joy in the resurrection, joy in making it through this,” she said.
New ways to worship Ash Wednesday
At Christ Church Cathedral, an Episcopal church, searching for a safer way to celebrate Ash Wednesday led to a more historical tradition. Originally, ashes were sprinkled on worshipers’ heads, instead of shaped into a cross, eliminating the need for touch.
“We’re going to try that this year,” Thompson said. “We don’t have to touch members, and we can stay socially distanced in the pews.”
Rather than approach the altar, congregants will stay seated, and the ashes will come to them.
The church will also host its Robert C. Stuart Lecture Series, “New Creation: the Ministry of Reconciliation,” which is online and open to the public.
The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston will follow a similar, modified procedure for ash distribution. Priests will wear masks and follow safety protocol, as they sprinkle ashes on parishioners' foreheads instead marking their foreheads with a cross. Recommendations for the adjusted ritual were made by the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
At Christ Church Sugar Land, a United Methodist congregation, R. DeAndre Johnson, pastor of music and worship life, will offer multiple options to members for Ash Wednesday.
“There will be an opportunity for everyone to participate at their own comfort level,” he said.
First, the church is hosting a drive-thru event; the pastor, wearing masks and gloves, will administer the ashes on their forehead, using a cotton swab to eliminate touch.
“It will be very similar to a drive-thru testing site,” Johnson said.
The swab method will be used later in the day, during services for congregants worshipping in person.
Christ Church Sugar Land is also creating a Lent-to-go package of bagged Palm Sunday ashes and devotional materials, which members can pick up in advance.
Johnson will create an instructional video on how family members can then impose ashes on each other as they livestream the service.
At The Woodlands United Methodist Church, the Rev. Mark Sorensen has created a walk-through, interactive and contemplative journey. Members will find self-guided stations devoted to rhythm, rebel, refuel and remember, all related to the concept of Sabbath. At the end, pastors will be on hand with ashes.
Sorensen has been reflecting lately on Scripture, specifically Paul’s writings from prison.
“While Paul was literally quarantined, he writes about joy, how you find joy in difficult circumstances,” Sorensen said. “I want to take this season to look for the good, to look for the blessings.”
He recommends that others use Lent to be intentional and reflect on how to create a better pace of life.
“Lent is not giving something up,” he said. “Lent is a season we get to refill and reconnect.”
Refocusing, reconnecting
At Cypress Bible Church, Dave Muntsinger, pastor of care and counseling, said congregants are sharing in a Lent devotional, “Steadfast Love,” through which parishioners will spend Lent developing a deeper prayer practice.
“COVID has taken from us,” he said. “It’s been a year of loss.”
During Lent, Muntsinger asks, focus on sacrifice instead.
“Christ sacrificed everything,” he said. “Make this a season to remember the sacrifice of Christ. That’s what helps us grow spiritually.”
Downtown, Thompson also promotes strengthening individual prayer practice during Lent. He recommends reflecting on the loss that occurred in 2020, whether tied to COVID-19, racial inequality or social injustice. He also suggests finding positive forces at work — and allowing them to refuel you.
“Look for small occasions of grace, those moments when the veil is pulled back almost for an instant, and we encounter God,” he said.
Thompson explained that focusing on what’s to come is also part of Lent, a season in preparation of celebrating the resurrection and Easter.
“Look to the horizon, for God’s future,” he said. “What do you hope for? Remember that the deeper meaning of Lent is to depend upon God. We certainly look to God for hope.”
Pastor Johnson said that lately he has been thinking of the biblical stories of the Israelites in the wilderness.
“Nobody wants to be in the wilderness, and they grew tired of being there,” he said. “Yet they discovered in the wilderness ways to be content. They learned better to hold onto hope and the assurance that God indeed is leading them to a promised land.”
The pastor finds many parallels for traversing the uncertainties of the pandemic.
“Sometimes wilderness lasts longer than anyone wants or can imagine,” he said. “But faith lives, and we continue to lean on God. He will lead us where we need to be.”
Pastor Sorensen said that during Lent last year, the focus was on prayer — and an acronym of the word Pause Rejoice Ask Yield — used for sermons.
He was talking about “pause” right before the church temporarily closed its doors because of the pandemic.
“To pray you need to be still,” he told his congregants. “I want you to find ways to disconnect from culture and society. I want you to find ways to pause in your life.”
Little did Sorensen know then that those words would soon after become a mandate for life during COVID-19. “It’s been such a surreal season of stillness,” he said.
While he finds himself back at the beginning, preparing for Lent again, the words for Ash Wednesday, “From dust you come and to dust you return,” have been with him all year.
“All of 2020 was a reminder that life is precious,” Sorensen said.
“The more you stay in connection with God, the more you pray, the more you look up, the more you find God’s peace is with you,” he said. “There’s hope. There’s always hope, even when the world looks flawed and scary.”
Lindsay Peyton is a Houston-based freelance writer.
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