Lent

Today is Ash Wednesday, the Chrisitan festival that marks the beginning of the season of Lent. Lent lasts forty days (excluding Sundays) and commemorates Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness before beginning his three-year ministry. Included during this period is His thrice temptation by Satan, each of which is rejected. These events are part of the three Synoptic Gospels by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, so the provenance or documentary proof is solid. Today at many of our churches, parishioners will be signed using ashes from palm crosses with the sign of the cross on their forehead when the priest will remind them, “you are dust, and to dust, you shall return.” It is a simple gest