Today 18 February 2025 is for all Christians starting their Lenten season
Todsy is called Ash Wednesday first day of the liturgical season of Lent. It always falls six and a half weeks before Easter, in preparation for Christ’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
Lent is forty-six days long. Forty of those days are penitential days, and six of them are Sundays.
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes with the Easter Vigil. The forty penitential days is an imitation of Jesus’ forty days in the desert.
Ash Wednesday dates back to the 11th century. Yet, the tradition of receiving ashes has even earlier roots — in the ancient Hebrew custom of clothing oneself in sackcloth and dusting oneself with ashes as a sign of penance.
It was a common practice within the early Church that those found guilty of grave public sin needed to do public penance before they were admitted back into communion with the Church and to the Most Holy Eucharist.
The public sinners came forward in sackcloth forty days before Easter and were sprinkled with ashes, keeping with many Old Testament examples of public penance.
They fasted and prayed for forty days and then, on Easter, were readmitted into full communion with the Church. Eventually, this practice was extended to the entire Church to highlight everyone’s need for penance.
Today, as a sign of our ongoing need to repent of our sins and do penance, the faithful are marked with ashes on their forehead as a sign of their commitment to the penitential season of Lent to celebrate with great joy the Solemnity of Easter.
The ashes symbolize our mortality. They are a physical reminder that our bodies will decay, but our souls will live on in eternal life. There are only two obligatory days of fasting and abstinence in the Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
“ Sustain us, O Lord, that our Lenten fast may be pleasing to You and be for us a healing remedy. Amen. ”
Source – Samsam Gullas
