Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.Today is Ash Wednesday, a day that marks the beginning of Lent, a Christian season of humility leading up to Easter. You may mark the forehead of each person with a cross of ashes, saying: May these ashes be a sign of our mortality and penitence, reminding us that only by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ are we given eternal life through the same Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. IMPOSITION OF ASHESĪlmighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth. Restore us, O God, and let your anger depart from us. CONFESSIONīy what we have done and by what we have left undone. Returning to God’s mercy and grace and marked with the cross of Christ, we make our way through Lent marked with a promise for the journey that leads to Easter and resurrection. The central ritual action of Ash Wednesday, receiving a cross on our foreheads with ash, echoes our anointing with oil at baptism and reminds us of our mortality. Ash Wednesday tries to put sin and separation from God into perspective by holding them in the context of the richness and relative shortness of life. We fast and give alms even as we share Christ’s feast in which, through the overflowing goodness of God, there is enough for all. We call to mind our own inevitable deaths so that we might, even now, share in the life of the resurrection. On Ash Wednesday we are honest about the depths of our sin because God’s mercy and power are deeper and wider.
While Ash Wednesday’s immediate subjects may be sin and death, the liturgy of the day also relates to baptism, mercy, and the feast of the resurrection. These Lenten disciplines are tools of discipleship that can lead us to renewal as we bury all that is holding us back from being truly alive. The tradition of Lent dates to the 3rd century AD. On this first day of Lent we confess our sin in a litany of repentance (Psalm 51), and during the season’s 40 days we are invited to carry out the Lenten disciplines: fasting, prayer, and works of love and charity (alms). Ash Wednesday is a solemn day of prayer that begins the season of Lent.
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