About Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is the opening of the season of Lent.  Lent is an Anglo-Saxon word for "spring" which is used to translate the Latin Quadragesima, Forty Days.  Since the fourth century it has been described as a penitential season for forty days, corresponding to the final period of preparation for candidates for Easter baptism. 

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Lent is therefore a season of repentance and renewal for the entire congregation.  The same Lenten exhortation urges self-examination, repentance, prayer, fasting, and self-denial, as well as reading and meditating on God's word as the means to the observance of a holy Lent.  The second Lenten preface speaks of preparing "with joy" for the coming feast and adds works of mercy and renewal in word and sacrament to the appropriate means.  The elements of joy and renewal are as important as prayer, fasting, and self-denial in the Lenten observance, which otherwise becomes a forty day repetition of Ash Wednesday.