Christians all over the world today Wednesday 5 March 2025 begin 40-day Lenten Season. It is a season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
This day starts on a day known as Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday.
It’s a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter. During Lent, Christians seek the Lord in prayer by reading Sacred Scripture; we serve by giving alms; and we practice self-control through fasting.
Christians are called not only to abstain from luxuries during Lent, but to a true inner conversion of heart as we seek to follow Christ’s will more faithfully.
We recall the waters of baptism in which we were also baptized into Christ’s death, died to sin and evil, and began new life in Christ.
Many know of the tradition of abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent, but they are also called to practice self-discipline and fast in other ways throughout the season.
Contemplate the meaning and origins of the Lenten fasting tradition in this reflection. In addition, the giving of alms is one way to share God’s gifts—not only through the distribution of money, but through the sharing of our time and talents.
This Wednesday also becomes customary for all the faithful to be reminded of the need for penitence and of their own mortality by receiving a memento mori in the form of ashes, on top of worshippers’ heads or marked in the shape of a cross on their foreheads, on the first day of Lent—hence the name Ash Wednesday.
