Ash Wednesday
Beginning of Lent
- Feast Day
- February 18
Ash Wednesday opens the season of Lent in the Latin Church and is, with Good Friday, one of the two universal days of fasting and abstinence in the Roman Rite. In 2026 Ash Wednesday falls on February 18.
The principal liturgical action of the day is the blessing and imposition of ashes. The ashes, made by burning the palms blessed at the previous year's Palm Sunday, are imposed on the heads of the faithful at Mass or at a Liturgy of the Word, with one of two formulas drawn from Scripture: "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" (Mark 1:15) or "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). The Roman Missal contains the proper texts in the section "Ash Wednesday."
The day's discipline of fasting and abstinence is established by canon law (Code of Canon Law, cc. 1249-1253) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' particular norms. According to the USCCB Lenten Fast and Abstinence guidance, in the Latin Catholic Church abstinence from meat binds those over the age of fourteen, and fasting binds those between eighteen and fifty-nine; on a fast day, one full meal and two smaller meals that together do not equal a full meal are permitted, with no eating between meals.
The use of ashes as a sign of penance is biblical and ancient (cf. Job 42:6; Daniel 9:3; Jonah 3:6; Matthew 11:21). The public liturgical observance is attested in the Latin Church from the seventh century. By the eleventh century the ceremony had taken its present universal form, and the imposition was extended from public penitents to the whole assembly.
Ash Wednesday inaugurates the forty days of Lent, calculated as the period from Ash Wednesday to the beginning of the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday, exclusive of Sundays. Lent prepares the Church for the celebration of the Paschal Mystery in the Sacred Triduum and Easter.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 1438) teaches that "the seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent, and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church's penitential practice." Ash Wednesday gives this practice public, sacramental, and bodily form. The imposition of ashes binds the assembly to the biblical tradition of conversion, and the day's fasting joins each member of the Church to the asceticism of Christ in the wilderness, into which Lent itself is the Church's annual descent.
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