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On Ash Wednesday we begin our forty-day journey toward Easter with a day of fasting and repentance. Marking our foreheads with dust, we acknowledge that we die and return to the earth. At the same time, the dust traces the life-giving cross indelibly marked on our foreheads at baptism.
We will gather in silence and begin at 3:00PM with a simple service of prayer. Midway through the service you will have the option (not obligatory at all!) to come forward and have the pastor mark your forehead in the sign of the cross with ashes.
Anyone who receives ashes can decide for themselves how long they wish to keep them on. You are not obligated to keep your forehead smudged as you go back out into public spaces. You can wipe your forehead clean as you leave the building. There is no virtue in signalling our piety to others. The rite is meant to symbolize an internal attitude of returning our hearts to God to which all of us who have been baptized are called during Lent.
Everything turns to ashes, everything whatsoever. This house I live in, these clothes I am wearing, my household stuff, my money, my fields, meadows, woods, the dog that follows me, the clock in the hall, this hand I am writing with, these eyes that read what I write, all the rest of my body, people I have loved, people I have hated, or been afraid of, whatever was great in my eyes upon earth, whatever small and contemptible, all without exception will fall back into dust.—Romano Guardini, Sacred Signs, trans. Melissa Kay