What is Ash Wednesday?
Shannon Niehaus |
March 1, 2017
What is Ash Wednesday?
Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. Ash Wednesday church services are normally designed to help us focus on the realities of our own mortality, our sinful human state, and our need for Jesus for forgiveness and eternal life.
What's up with the ashes?
In the Catholic Church (as well as some others) the ashes are made from burning the palm branches that were used in the Palm Sunday services the prior year.
The placing of the ashes on the forehead using the thumb is normally done in the sign of the cross. Putting the ashes on the forehead is a reminder that “we came from the dust, and to the dust we will return.”
We are God’s creation and we will one day die. The sign of the cross reminds us that eternal life is found only through the cross of Jesus. Many Christians leave the ashes on their foreheads all day as a sign of humility before God.