Ash Wednesday Countdown

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, the Christian season of penance and reflection in the forty days before Easter.

History

Ash Wednesday opens Lent, the period of roughly forty days that Christians observe in preparation for Easter, recalling the forty days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness. Its date moves each year because it is tied to Easter, falling forty-six days before it. The season of Lenten fasting took shape in the early centuries of the Church, and by the Middle Ages the marking of its first day with ashes had become widespread in the Western tradition. The day takes its name from its central rite: the placing of ashes on the foreheads of worshippers, traditionally in the shape of a cross, often accompanied by the words 'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.' The ashes are customarily made by burning the palm branches blessed on the previous year's Palm Sunday. It is observed by Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and many other Christians as a day of fasting and abstinence. The shape of the season settled gradually. The Council of Nicaea in 325 referred to a forty-day period of preparation before Easter, and tradition associates Pope Gregory the Great, around the year 600, with fixing its start on a Wednesday — an arrangement that supplies the four extra days needed to reach forty fasting days once Sundays, which are never fast days, are set aside. In 1091 the Synod of Benevento under Pope Urban II extended the receiving of ashes to all the faithful rather than to public penitents alone, making the rite the shared beginning of Lent that it remains today. In recent years some churches have also carried the ashes beyond their buildings through 'Ashes to Go', offering the sign at train stations and street corners to passers-by.

Meaning

Ash Wednesday is a solemn call to reflection, humility and renewal. The ashes are an outward sign of an inward turning — an honest acknowledgement of human frailty and an invitation to begin the Lenten journey of self-examination and growth. Rather than being sorrowful for its own sake, the day looks ahead. The disciplines of Lent it begins — prayer, fasting and generosity — are undertaken as preparation for the joy of Easter, giving the season a quiet sense of purpose.