Ash Wednesday takes its name from the imposition of ashes made from the palms blessed on the previous year's Palm Sunday. In the ancient Roman discipline ashes marked those entering the order of public penitents at the beginning of Lent; by the end of the eleventh century the sign had been extended to the whole assembly, so that the entire Church takes the penitent's place. The date is movable, falling forty-six days before Easter Sunday, since the Sundays of Lent are not counted among the forty days of fast. At Mass the blessing and distribution of ashes follows the homily and takes the place of the penitential act. The minister uses one of two formulas: "Repent, and believe in the Gospel," drawn from the preaching of Jesus in Mark, or "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return," drawn from Genesis. Violet vestments are worn, the Alleluia is set aside for the whole season, and the readings are the same every year: Joel's summons to return to the Lord with the whole heart, Paul's appeal to be reconciled to God in this acceptable time, and the Lord's teaching on almsgiving, prayer, and fasting done in secret. Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation, yet it is one of the most heavily attended days of the year, and it is a day of both fasting and abstinence for the universal Church. Church law binds abstinence from meat on all who have reached fourteen and fasting on those between eighteen and fifty-nine, with the ordinary exceptions for health. In the Table of Liturgical Days the day ranks in the first class, above every solemnity, so nothing may displace it. Ashes are a sacramental, not a sacrament, and the Church cautions that receiving them without conversion of heart is precisely what the day's Gospel warns against.

Liturgical season

Lent

• Joel 2:12-18
• 2 Corinthians 5:20—6:2
• Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

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