Ash Wednesday

Heard in the wild

The longer version

What it means

Ash Wednesday opens Lent, forty-six days before Easter. Its central act is the imposition of ashes: a minister dips a thumb in ashes and traces a cross on each person's forehead, saying "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return" or "Repent, and believe the gospel." People then wear the mark for the rest of the day — to work, to school, to the grocery store. It's a public sign of a private intention: I'm mortal, I'm a sinner, and I'm starting Lent.

For Catholics it's also a fast day (one full meal) and a day of abstinence from meat.

Why people say it

Ashes have meant grief and repentance since ancient Israel — people sat in sackcloth and ashes. The words come from God's sentence in Genesis: you're dust. Christians find the day bracing rather than gloomy: it tells the truth about death in a culture that avoids it, and it does so in a room full of people who'll all walk out marked the same way, then heads straight toward Easter.

How to respond

If a coworker shows up with ashes, they've been to church that morning; you can say nothing, or "Ash Wednesday?" — they'll appreciate that you know. Don't tell them they have something on their face unless you want to be the joke. If you'd like to receive ashes yourself, any Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, or Methodist church will give them to anyone who comes forward, no membership required.

If you hear it in different churches

Catholic, Anglican/Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches all observe it with ashes; it's one of the best-attended days of the year in Catholic parishes, though not a holy day of obligation. Orthodox Christians begin Great Lent on "Clean Monday" instead and don't use ashes. Baptist, Pentecostal, and most non-denominational churches don't observe it, though some have begun offering ashes.

Where does “Ash Wednesday” come from?

Sackcloth and ashes are a biblical sign of mourning and repentance (Job, Daniel, Jonah's Nineveh). Public penitents in the early church were sprinkled with ashes at the start of Lent; by around 1000, the practice extended to everyone, and Pope Urban II endorsed it in 1091. The name in the Roman rite is Feria Quarta Cinerum, "Wednesday of Ashes." The Reformation dropped it in Reformed churches; Anglicans and Lutherans kept or revived it, Methodists took it up in the twentieth century, and "Ashes to Go" — clergy offering ashes on sidewalks — began in St. Louis in 2007.

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