Ash Wednesday Service

Please see the Service Rota for details

The sign of the Cross - "remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return"

The service draws on the ancient Biblical traditions of covering one's head with ashes, wearing sackcloth, and fasting.

In Ash Wednesday services churchgoers are marked on the forehead with a cross of ashes as a sign of penitence and mortality. The use of ashes, made by burning palm crosses from the previous Palm Sunday, is very symbolic.

God our Father, you create us from the dust of the earth.

Grant that these ashes may be for us a sign of our penitence, and a symbol of our mortality.

The minister or priest marks each worshipper on the forehead, and says "remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return", or a similar phrase based on God's sentence on Adam in Genesis 3:19.

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