In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Joe Heschmeyer to discuss why some Christians believe receiving ashes is a sin.
Transcript:
Cy Kellett: Here I am. We’re sitting in Mass today. It was beautiful. Lots of kids came, families and all that. Here to the chapel at Catholic Answers. A wonderful priest came and celebrated Mass for us. Then the here comes the reading for the Gospel and Jesus is really direct. Stop showing off with your public prayer. Stop showing off with your public fat. Wash your face, anoint your head. Because, look, the one who’s drawing attention to themselves or him or herself is already rewarded. He says several times, they already have their rewarder. He already got his reward. Then we all walk out of the chapel with a giant black mark on our forehead like we’re trying to show off to everybody. How can we Catholics get away with this?
Joe Heschmeyer: Yeah, this is, it’s great because on the surface it looks like we are being flagrantly hypocritical, like not just violating what the Gospel tells us to do, but actually having that be the gospel reading of that day. But surely the church isn’t just like, we don’t care what the Bible says. Here’s the reading. Obviously something else is going on. And the important thing is Jesus says in Matthew 6, 1, beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them. It does not mean that practicing your piety before men is automatically wrong. There’s the question is what are your motives for doing so? Because the motives of the hypocrites was that they wanted to impress the people around them. And Ash Wednesday is not about impressing other people with, you know, how holy you are or anything like this. Quite the contrary. The point of Ash Wednesday is a public acknowledgment that I’m a sinner. And so it really is the opposite of what the hypocrites, what the Pharisees were doing. They were talking about how holy, how self righteous they were. We are doing the opposite. Now, I think it’s important to recognize Matthew 6, which talks about not performing your piety before men in order to be seen by them, comes half a chapter after Matthew 5:16, which says, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who’s in heaven. So within this very short span of time, we’re told, basically there are times and places where it’s good to do good works that you can be seen by others, where you, you want to do the right thing and you want to inspire other people. You know, if you’ve ever raised kids, you know, there are times where you’re very intentional about, you know, getting on your knees and praying by your bed so that your kids can see you pray. Like, you want to both do the right thing and you want to set a good example by doing the right thing. That’s not what Jesus is condemning in Matthew 6. What Jesus is condemning in Matthew 6 is doing the right thing to try to impress other people so they’ll be pleased with you. Right. Rather than to set a good example by your good works so that they’ll give glory to your Father who’s in heaven. So in both Matthew 5 and in Matthew 6, Jesus talks about times where we might think, oh, maybe we should do this pious work publicly. And he tells us to do it when it’s going to lead people to give glory to our Father in heaven and not to do it if we’re just trying to get their accolades so that we can be seen by them and our reward is just the acclaim of others. So by all means, you should embrace Ash Wednesday. You should have ashes on your forehead, but you should do it for the right reasons. If you’re doing it to show how pious you are, you’re missing the point of Ash Wednesday. If you’re doing it as a call to conversion to lead people into right relationship with our Father in heaven, then it’s good and you should do it.
Caller: I gotta be honest with you, Joe. I feel like I’m mixed. Like, in terms of what you’re doing. Yeah.
Cy Kellett: Like, when I think about my motives, I’m like, yeah, my motives are always a little bit mixed. You know, I do wanna give glory to God. I also kind of like people to think, oh, look at Mr. Holy Pants over there. You know, that’s kind of. I’m kind of a. Yeah, I don’t know.
Joe Heschmeyer: Yeah. It’s actually a great point because the catechism even points out that a good work can become a bad work if you’re doing it for sinful motives. Like, if you’re doing it for purposes of your own pride, then it stops being a thing that you ought to do. And so we want to talk about it in these two senses. It is perfectly acceptable for you to have a mix of motives, some of them better than others. That’s absolutely normal. You can go to work because we’re spreading the gospel, but also because it’s a lot of fun, but also because you want to feed your family. All of those things can be true at once.
Caller: Right.
Joe Heschmeyer: Not every motive has to be the highest, purest motive. That’s not a requirement. And that would be a heavy burden. We wouldn’t want to impose on anyone. However, while you can have higher and lower motives, you should never be led by sinful motives. And so if you cross that line into a sinful desire to win the acclaim of others like the hypocrites have where you want to seem holier than you really are and and you want to give a false impression of yourself, that’s when it becomes a problem. But the mere fact, even, even the fact that you want to be held in good esteem by others is not by itself bad unless you’re willing to be a hypocrite to get there. You’re willing to, you know, be self righteous or present one image publicly while you’re a very different person internally. Those kind of things, that’s when it becomes problematic.
Cy Kellett: Got it. All right. Why aren’t you Catholic? That’s our question for the callers today. 888-318-7884. Joe Heschmeyer, our guest and I’m going to go right to Mackenzie in Pasco, Washington. I always like it when Mackenzie calls.