Why is there a Mass on Ash Wednesday?

[mbergin]

I don’t believe that Ash Wednesday is a holy day of obligation, so why is there a full Mass? The reason I ask is my wife and I both work and we have two young girls. It is near impossible to get home, get the girls from daycare, and get to church for a full Mass, all while trying to feed them, change them, and make sure they get to bed on time.

It is unfortunate, because I WANT to get ashes and I WANT my girls to get ashes and to be brought up as Catholic as I was, but now having to go to a Mass in order to get ashes, I end up missing Ash Wednesday all together. It is a SHAME!

When I was a kid, we would walk into church, walk up to the altar and receive ashes. No Mass, no big to-do…

I wish the Catholic Church would make it a bit easier to be Catholic these days for those of us who REALLY want to be. It is not a holy day of obligation, so why make it one?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Ordinarily I will edit a question to remove unnecessary emphasis and to make other minor corrections for ease of reading. In this case, I have left alone your emphasized words because I think they indicate an attitude that needs to be taken into account in answering your question.

If I am reading your question correctly, you want to know why the Church is not more accommodating to your WANTS, rather than ask yourself how you and your wife can better accommodate your lives to attending Mass on an important day on the Church’s liturgical calendar – which is particularly unfortunate when we consider that there are very few days of the year that the Church asks its members to try to do so.

Ash Wednesday indeed is not a holy day of obligation, but Mass is held on that day because the Church offers Mass every single day of the year, with the exceptions of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. That is because the Church takes seriously the necessity of offering the holy sacrifice of the Mass, which re-presents in unbloody form the eternal sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, by which the world is saved.

You need not attend Mass on Ash Wednesday if it is “impossible” for you to do so. But if you “really” want to be a serious Catholic, I suggest that you and your wife more closely examine your responsibilities and reconsider how you can fit them around your Catholic obligations (rather than try to fit your Catholic obligations around your secular life).