What is Ash Wednesday?

The day

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, the Catholic season of penance, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving that prepares the faithful for the celebration of the Paschal Mystery at Easter. It falls forty-six days before Easter Sunday (the forty days of Lent plus the six Sundays of Lent, on which fasting is suspended).

The date varies year by year because Easter is movable. In 2027, Easter Sunday is March 28, so Ash Wednesday falls on February 17.

The imposition of ashes

The defining ritual of Ash Wednesday is the imposition of ashes. The minister (priest or deacon, or in pastoral necessity an instituted lector or extraordinary minister) marks each member of the faithful on the forehead with ashes, in the form of a cross, with one of two formulas drawn from the Roman Pontifical:

• "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19).
• "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" (Mark 1:15).

The ashes are made from the palms blessed on the previous year's Palm Sunday, burned and reserved for this purpose. The use of ashes as a sign of penance has biblical precedent in the Old Testament: Job repents in dust and ashes (Job 42:6); the people of Nineveh fast and put on sackcloth and ashes at the preaching of Jonah (Jonah 3:5-6); the prophet Daniel turns to the Lord with prayer and supplication, "with fasting and sackcloth and ashes" (Daniel 9:3).

The imposition of ashes at the start of the public penitential season is attested in the West from the eighth century onward and was made universal in the Latin Rite by the Synod of Benevento in 1091.¹

Fast and abstinence

Ash Wednesday is one of the two days of the year (along with Good Friday) on which Catholics are bound by both fast and abstinence:

• Fast: binding on Catholics from age 18 to age 59. Those who fast eat one full meal during the day and may take two smaller meals (which together do not equal a full meal). No eating between meals is permitted; liquids and medicine are allowed.
• Abstinence: binding on Catholics 14 years of age and older. Abstinence means refraining from meat (the flesh of land animals); fish, eggs, dairy, and meat broth are permitted.

The norms of fast and abstinence are set by the Latin Rite Code of Canon Law (Canons 1249-1253) and by the Paenitemini of Pope Saint Paul VI (1966).²

Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation

Despite the strong custom of attendance, Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church. The faithful are not bound under pain of sin to attend Mass; they are bound to fast and abstain. Nevertheless, attendance at the Ash Wednesday Mass (or a separate liturgy of the Word with the imposition of ashes) is one of the most widely practiced Catholic customs of the year, drawing many who do not regularly attend Mass.

What follows Ash Wednesday

The forty days of Lent (the Sundays not counted) extend from Ash Wednesday through the conclusion of Lent at the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday. During Lent, every Friday is also a day of abstinence (binding on Catholics 14 and older).

For the larger Lenten season, see Lent. For the climactic Triduum that closes Lent, see the Sacred Triduum.

Sources

Footnotes

1. The Synod of Benevento (1091) extended the universal Latin Rite obligation of the imposition of ashes to all the faithful. See also the Roman Pontifical, the Rite of the Blessing and Distribution of Ashes. ↩

2. Pope Saint Paul VI, apostolic constitution Paenitemini (February 17, 1966), reforming the Latin Rite discipline of fast and abstinence. ↩