UPDATE by Emily
Thursday, 3 March 2022
As foreshadowed by Chris Brunelle’s comment on my original post (thanks, Chris!), the song “Ashes” was given a deep lyrical revision for its appearance in Oregon Catholic Press’ Breaking Bread hymnal. I can confirm this update appears in the 2022 hymnal, but I am told it debuted in Breaking Bread 2021. (I am so far past considering this song for use in the liturgy, I confess I did not notice the revision last year.) The revision removes a lot of the self-absorbed language from the verses that I critique below, but it retains the misleading identification of ashes as “an offering,” so prominent in the song’s refrain.
Still, I find it interesting and perhaps encouraging that a major publisher took the time to consider theologically-based critiques of a popular song and to do something about it.
Do note that what I’m critiquing below are the songs original lyrics, not the revision.
Thanks for visiting,
Emily
ORIGINAL POST, dated 27 February 2019:
We rise again from ashes,
from the good we’ve failed to do.
We rise again from ashes,
to create ourselves anew.
If all our world is ashes,
then must our lives be true,
An offering of ashes,
an offering to you.
(lyrics from the song “Ashes” by Tom Conry c. 1978 New Dawn Music)
Catholics have been singing the song “Ashes” at Ash Wednesday Masses in English-speaking North America since the late 1970s. Many Catholics view it as the inevitable choice for the occasion; I have heard more than one person claim “it’s not really Ash Wednesday” if we don’t sing “Ashes.” Thus in preparing the Ash Wednesday liturgy, “Ashes” gets a free ride; its popularity means it is not subjected to the usual scrutiny. “Ashes” on Ash Wednesday is a fait accompli.
But what if we put “Ashes” to the test? What if we re-evaluated the song’s worthiness as we do with other music employed in the service of liturgical celebrations? Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship, the US Catholic Bishops’ authoritative instruction on liturgical music, says “In judging the appropriateness of music for the Liturgy, one will examine its liturgical, pastoral, and musical qualities. […] All three judgments must be considered together, and no individual judgment can be applied in isolation from the other two.” (¶126) What if we applied this one, three-fold judgment to “Ashes”? How would we go about it?
When considering a new song for use in liturgy, start with the text. Ignore the musical features of the song for a moment and investigate first how the text fares on its own. With the glut of music published for use in Catholic liturgy these days, we must whittle down the options, lest we drown in their sheer volume. Text provides a more objective starting point than music, as a powerful melody can persuade, even beguile, leading us to overlook textual weaknesses. There’s a reason the US Bishops list the liturgical judgment first in Sing to the Lord. And if the song in question doesn’t pass the textual test, if it isn’t able to “support the liturgical text and to convey meaning faithful to the teaching of the Church,” (STL ¶128) then one is free to continue the search for a song that will, without entering into the perhaps murkier work of discerning the song’s pastoral and musical value.
In this initial text-only screening, I often find liturgical songs with lyrics that are overwhelmingly “horizontal,” wherein the singer addresses only the self or the gathered assembly. In effect, such lyrics have us singing to ourselves, not God, prompting the question “whom do we worship?” – the only acceptable answer to which (“God!”) our liturgical songs should not wittingly or unwittingly obfuscate. Other songs contain “theology bombs,” where, in the midst of an otherwise lovely piece, a renegade lyric runs contrary to clear-cut Catholic doctrine. (Yes, this even happens in hymnals published for Catholic use; the reference to Jesus’ death satisfying the “wrath of God” in Keith Getty and Stuart Townsend’s popular song “In Christ Alone” (in Breaking Bread (Oregon Catholic Press), etc.) is a perfect example.)
Alan Hommerding’s insightful little book Words that Work for Worship (World Library, 2007) says musicians should look for the creedal qualities of “one, holy, catholic [ie. “universal”] and apostolic” in liturgical texts. “What we look for and strive for,” he says, “are texts that are worthy of a church that bears these marks, and texts that pray in harmony with them. Conversely, we are wary of texts that may disrupt our prayer inheritance or in some way depart from these characteristics of the church.” (9)
So what about “Ashes”? How does it fare when we isolate its text? Turns out, not so well. Although the lyrics address God in a vertical, “we-Thou” orientation, that orientation is weak, only clearly addressing God in the one-line refrain (“an offering to you”), in portions of verse two, and in the doxological verse four. And it’s not simply the song’s point of view which weakens its “we-Thou” orientation; its lyrics contradict orthodox Christian understandings of how God’s grace works to recreate us in the Holy Spirit (should we choose to cooperate with it) during Lent. Departing from Psalm 104’s vertical supplication to God for renewal (“Send forth your spirit, they are created/and you renew the face of the earth”), “Ashes” claims: “We rise again from ashes, to create ourselves anew” (emphasis mine). Although by verse four the song brings itself into alignment with Catholic teaching, finally pinning praise on the Spirit “who creates the world anew,” the more prominent lyric has done its damage. The song’s emphasis on our own personal agency in making change in our lives, with no (or weak, or inconsistent) reference to God, smacks more of the self-help pop psychology of the mid-twentieth century than of the enduring inheritance of our Judeo-Christian tradition. This overly self-referential character is a common flaw in modern North American liturgical music texts – one to watch out for.
Sadly, that is not “Ashes’” only textual problem, or arguably its worst. Besides some unintelligibility of insight in lines five and six above, the song hinges on a repeated refrain (“An offering of ashes, an offering to you”) which gives a confused and inaccurate explanation of why we wear ashes on our head this first day of Lent. To understand its failings, one must know just a little about the symbolic use of ashes in the Catholic tradition. It is a practice carried over from Hebrew scripture and pagan antiquity as an expression of sorrow for sin (Adolf Adam, The Liturgical Year, 97). Ashes, however, are not employed as an offering to God in Christianity. We offer bread and wine as symbols of our own transformation into the Body and Blood of Christ. (These are sometimes accompanied by incense, which symbolizes our offerings and prayers rising up to God, but is also not, in itself, an “offering”.) Christ offers himself as an unblemished, eternal, Paschal sacrifice to take away the sins of the world. But we don’t offer ashes to God. (What a paltry offering that would be! God gives us his only begotten Son, and in turn we give him… last year’s burnt palm fronds? Yuck.)
Worse, this “offering” lyric, especially in its emphasis through repetition, obscures the actual, coherent, meaningful symbolism in our tradition of wearing ashes on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday. As Hommerding says above, it “disrupts” a particular deposit of our prayer inheritance as Catholics. To accurately understand the symbolism of ashes on Ash Wednesday, turn instead to the second option for the prayer of blessing (not offering!) over the ashes:
O God, who desire not the death of sinners,
but their conversion,
mercifully hear our prayers
and in your kindness be pleased to bless + these ashes,
which we intend to receive upon our heads,
that we, who acknowledge we are but ashes
and shall return to dust,
may, through a steadfast observance of Lent,
gain pardon for sins and newness of life
after the likeness of your Risen Son.
(Roman Missal, Third Edition, 210; emphasis mine)
The second of the two provided versicles which the minister says to each penitent while administering ashes conveys their symbolic meaning even more accessibly: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (RM3, 211) And we wear this symbol of our mortality on our foreheads, a part of the body long associated with spiritual consciousness. What better inspiration to be faithful to our Lenten promise to strive for greater holiness in this life than this physical sign – which we are bold enough to wear, all day, in public! – that our time in this world is limited, that we must become spiritual rather than merely physical beings, while we can. Ashes on our foreheads are not an offering to God, though this interpretation may feel more comfortable. Rather, ashes challenge and remind us that the time for discipleship is now, that as Jesus says, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand.” (Mark 1:15)
I have presented these objections to the song “Ashes” to catechists, pastoral liturgists and musicians many times, sometimes as an example of how one can apply theological training in a practical way. But I admit to doing so also in the hope that church musicians will discontinue their use of this song in favor of another piece from a growing canon of very good alternatives (suggestions: Schutte’s “Ashes to Ashes,” Alonso’s “Sign Us With Ashes” and Tate’s “Remember You Are Dust”). Even as musicians appreciate the chance to re-assess the song, some choose to keep “Ashes” on the hymn board. “It’s the only time we sing it all year,” they argue, as if knowingly failing to observe best practices is excusable as long as infrequent (try that in a healthcare setting).
But I’ve heard another, more insidious reason for not deleting “Ashes” from the Ash Wednesday playlist, and it represents, to some, the importance of the pastoral aspect of evaluating liturgical music. “People love that song! They all sing along!” While it is true that well-loved liturgical songs engender participation, this does not mean that within the texts of such songs, anything goes. As Sing to the Lord advises, we may not judge the pastoral qualities of the song in isolation from its liturgical value. And as it happens, with “Ashes,” the so-called pastoral value of the song is more complicated than how well it gets people to sing. True confession: as an undergraduate music minister, I really wanted to program “Let It Be” by the Beatles on a Marian feast day. I thought it would be so relevant – that people would sing it, because they already knew it! Thankfully, my Newman Center director would not permit it. He knew – as I do now – that music for liturgy must do more than engender participation. It must form us not into any “body,” but into the Body of Christ.
How does “Ashes” form us? There is an ancient liturgical axiom, lex orandi, lex credendi, which means “the law of praying is the law of believing.” It served as a reminder in the Patristic era to look toward the Church’s ancient, apostolic prayer tradition as a source of orthodoxy. Even today, the phrase bespeaks ritual’s particular, anthropological power to inform and norm the beliefs of those who routinely participate in it. The phrase means that I can teach and blog all day about what those ashes on our foreheads mean, but you’ll learn more about them, and at a deeper level of consciousness, through what is said (and sung) about them in a ritual context.
Ironically, this means “Ashes” fails the pastoral judgment as well, because its very popularity and beloved, fait accompli status in some communities threatens to unintentionally assimilate the faithful to a self-obsessed dominant culture which values symbols that bring comfort (even unintelligibly) over those which challenge. In programming it year after year without reflection or re-assessment, we ingrain in Catholics two false ideas: 1. that they themselves effect their own spiritual renewal in Lent, and 2. that our ashes are an “offering” to God. This is perhaps its worst flaw, for ashes are a powerful sacramental sign which, properly understood, reorients us – reminds us to repent while there is time.
Feel free to share your own thoughts about “Ashes” in the comments. Do you still hear it every Ash Wednesday where you worship? Why or why not, do you suppose?
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, March 6, 2019. My prayers and blessings are with you and yours for a transformational Lenten season!
Hi Emily, I really appreciated your thoughtful evaluation of the “Ashes” song. I’m in total agreement.
I completely understand your points, but I still love the song.
I knew Tom Conry when he was just starting out as my church ‘s music director. It was sometime between 1973 and 1978, in Reston,VA. He was our family friend. My parents really enjoyed working with him, as they were in the choir, liturgical ministers, and on the church leadership/management of the church. Pretty cool.
For what it’s worth, the text of this song is being revised and the new version will appear in OCP’s Breaking Bread book this fall. I haven’t seen the revision yet but I’m assuming it addresses some of this issues you discuss here
Thanks, Chris. Interesting in terms of acknowledging the problem. Seems like energy might be better spend commissioning one of their many talented artists to compose a new song, rather than trying to plug the many holes in this one.
Since Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, and since Lent is the liturgical season during which we are especially meant to focus on our failures to be good, on our sinfulness, the song is apt. It is a Lenten song. And I will add that when we sang it on Ash Wednesday in my old parish, people cried. The song and its lyrics, where we acknowledge our failures, but offer to God our attempts, knowing that, in comparison to God’s goodness, it all must seem like ashes, would overwhelm people with emotion. It is clearly a powerful song, despite being imperfect theologically, as most songs that people love are.
Barbara, thanks for taking the time to read and comment. The Church in her wisdom has never endorsed evaluating art according to its ability to make people cry, so I must disagree with your assessment.
What’s interesting is that, in the most recent edition of the hymnal Breaking Bread, the lyrics of “Ashes” have been deeply revised to remove some of the problematic lyrics. (Some problems still remain, including the sacramentally misleading refrain calling the ashes an “offering”.)
Why cling to one song, no matter how much we might like it, when so many better options exist? Let’s give some new compositions a try, ones written with more maturity and sacramental understanding.
It is about our free will to offer our failings to God and turn away from sin. In today’s homily our priest stated the corollary, that Lent is where you face that you can’t do it alone, and need the Savior to be saved. Perhaps that’s the aspect you feel is missing from this hymn? Yes, that’s about the “self”, but “not for self alone” – committing your agency to (re)turn to God – cooperate if you will. You can’t expect to just keep doing what you’re doing and wait for Jesus to come in and rescue you without first looking to Him and reflecting on your own sins. It always involves both your own free will and letting in God to let His will be done. Some always worry about confusion over what is stated metaphorically but most churchgoers seem to be able to grasp this complexity. Fitting a concept into song often simplifies it: do all hymns in a Mass need to provide “balance” and cover a theology aspect not covered in the preceding hymns? (Full disclosure: no singing of “Ashes” today, and no longer reflexively brought out every year at this parish).
Thanks for visiting and commenting, Matthew. I agree that people grasp metaphor well in most cases, but good metaphors shouldn’t need a lot of explanation (or any) to communicate. To answer your question, yes, the songs pastoral musicians choose for Mass definitely need to provide a balance, not necessarily trying to “cover” all aspects of Christian theology (that would be impossible), but especially with regard to the issue of human agency vs. God’s all-sufficient grace. It’s a both/and, and our songs should reflect that, across the board. And no song should be so out of balance on that issue as to send a problematic message, such as “Ashes” does (or rather did, before its recent lyrical revision). Again, thanks for your comment.
The parishes I’ve belonged to haven’t sung this song, so I don’t know it and I don’t have any pre-existing like or dislike of it. When I read your post, it basically made sense. But with the revisions resulting in only the one line of the refrain being disliked by you … I’m curious about this: two of the comments seem to raise a solid point about your dislike of the use of the word offering. While I agree a song’s ability to make people cry shouldn’t be a determinant of using the song, what about her point of: “we acknowledge our failures, but offer to God our attempts”?
Matthew makes a similar point: “It is about our free will to offer our failings to God and turn away from sin. In today’s homily our priest stated the corollary, that Lent is where you face that you can’t do it alone, and need the Savior to be saved.”
My wording might be: We are going to Ash Wednesday in order to begin our participation in the process and practices of Lent, and that involves offering ourselves (our failings, our efforts, our hearts, our lives etc.) up to Jesus and to God to be transformed and renewed. Ash Wednesday is also the start of us making sacrifices during Lent and undergoing some amount of suffering through those sacrifices. Many Popes including the most recent Pope Benedict have encouraged and requested that people offer their sufferings to God in various ways, and also offer other aspects of themselves (or their lives or their whole selves) to God. One example is Benedict saying this in an encyclical:
I would like to add here another brief comment with some relevance for everyday living. There used to be a form of devotion—perhaps less practised today but quite widespread not long ago—that included the idea of “offering up” the minor daily hardships that continually strike at us like irritating “jabs”, thereby giving them a meaning. Of course, there were some exaggerations and perhaps unhealthy applications of this devotion, but we need to ask ourselves whether there may not after all have been something essential and helpful contained within it. What does it mean to offer something up? Those who did so were convinced that they could insert these little annoyances into Christ’s great “com-passion” so that they somehow became part of the treasury of compassion so greatly needed by the human race. In this way, even the small inconveniences of daily life could acquire meaning and contribute to the economy of good and of human love. Maybe we should consider whether it might be judicious to revive this practice ourselves.
https://excorde.org/2011/pope-benedict-on-offering-up-sacrifices
Another quote from Benedict:
“To the sick, he implored, “I ask you to pray and offer your sufferings for priests, that they may remain faithful to their vocations and that their ministry be rich in spiritual fruits, to the benefit of the entire church.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/17924/pope-benedict-asks-sick-to-offer-up-suffering-for-priests
Also, by wearing the ashes all day in places where at least some people will dislike them, disdain them or secretly make fun of them for: a) their faith; and b) the practice of having ashes smeared on their foreheads … aren’t people in a sense offering their public image (or reputation or ego) to God? While it may only be a minor sacrifice or burden, Popes and doctors of the church have often advised us to offer even small things up to God.
When I read the lyrics of the song, I understand that line of the refrain the same way as Matthew and Barbara (and similar to how I wrote above) … and I wouldn’t read that one word as saying that ashes are a formal liturgical offering. In other words, as Matthew said, I take it as a metaphor, and I don’t think it needs explanation. This is because the teachings of the church about Ash Wednesday, about Lent, about salvation and redemption are quite clear … and part of it involves offering ourselves to God in various ways both at church and outside of church. For example, here are excerpts from the Catholic News Agency:
With our small offering, Jesus can do great things, just like when he multiplied five loaves and three fishes to feed thousands, Pope Francis said Sunday.
“It would be good to ask ourselves every day: ‘What do I bring to Jesus today?’” the pope said during his weekly Angelus message July 25.
Speaking from a window of the apostolic palace, Francis said Jesus “can do a lot with one of our prayers, with a gesture of charity for others, even with one of our sufferings handed over to His mercy.”
“[We give] our small things to Jesus and he works miracles. This is how God loves to act: He does great things, starting from small, freely-given ones.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/248492/pope-francis-with-our-small-offering-jesus-can-do-great-things
An excerpt from another Angelus address is:
Pope Francis said Sunday that great joy is found when one offers his life in service to God’s call.
“There are different ways of carrying out the plan that God has for each of us, which is always a plan of love. … And the greatest joy for every believer is to respond to this call, to offer all of himself at the service of God and his brothers and sisters,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Jan. 17.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/246131/pope-francis-the-greatest-joy-for-every-believer-is-to-respond-to-gods-call
Maybe it’s reasonable and fair and humble to concede that while the original lyrics (that were revised) were off track, the metaphor of an offering is acceptable in the song (though not your preferred metaphor). If not, I worry that you and I and others risk falling into being pharisees who are nitpicking … and that we’re also creating division within the church … and or for the speck in the eyes of others while ignoring the lumber in our own.
Peter, thanks for reading and responding. I continue to be amazed and appreciative of the way this post sparks conversation.
I think it’s going down a dangerous road to speak of interpreting a symbol in “preferred” and “less preferred” ways, when in truth there is “what the symbol means” and “other stuff it was never intended to mean” but could be stretched to make fit, as it were. The proper interpretation of the ashes is as a sign of our mortality. That’s not just my preference, that’s our tradition. If it means more to you than that, great – but our songs shouldn’t confuse the matter.
In response to your comment about scrutinizing the details of liturgy to a Pharisaical degree, I quote my Modern Orthodox rabbi friend who said “God is in the details.” As long as one is scrutinizing with the end of making the worship of God more perfect and true, then the scrutiny is merited. If, however, one scrutinizes for some other reason, such as bringing attention or glory to oneself, then I certainly agree with you. If I have done that in sharing my evaluation of the song “Ashes” (or in any other way), I ask forgiveness.
I disagree that the meaning of Ash Wednesday’s ashes is limited to death. In Catholic theology, in numerous places in the scriptures, sin and death are equated. Even a selfish hedonistic thieving murdering atheist believes in the reality of death. We also believe in the reality of sin. I accept the ashes as a symbol of my current sinfulness, well beyond a reminder that my body will cease to function at some point in the future.
As a symbol of my grievous faults, the ashes are an excellent metaphor for the ash-like failures that litter my life.
What better way to begin Lent than by recognizing this?
. When I sing this song I do not think of the ashes on my forehead but the mess of my life – failures, attempts, gifts withheld, dreams quashed, stumblings, narrowness of vision. I don’t think the author was ever referring to the ashes used in the service. I think the 2021 revision of the song makes it very theologically worthwhile and we intend to keep it in our Ash Wednesday service as singable and meaningful. It is particularly important in music only sung once a year to give the non-musicians in the (often small) crowd a known song that they can relax into enough to think about the text.
While I have long been a fan of the song, your piece has convinced me of its many problems. I do believe that parts of it are salvageable though. The second is the best part of the song to me, and the part I believe has the most liturgical value:
We offer You our failures,
we offer You attempts;
The gifts not fully given,
the dreams not fully dreamt.
Give our stumblings direction,
give our visions wider view,
While maybe not ideal for Ash Wednesday, it is a good Lenten prayer. We are acknowledging our our short comings, and bringing them to God in hopes that He give us the grace to expand on them.