Ash Wednesday and the Lent Experience at St. Matthews

Dear Parish family:

If you plan to Zoom-in for the Virtual Ash Wednesday tomorrow at 5:30pm, please stop by the Church office today and tomorrow (between 9 a.m. and 12 Noon) to pick up a small sealed cup containing ashes on a gauze pad which you or another person can use to mark the sign of the cross on your forehead. It is very easy!

The Season of Lent began in the early days of the Church as a time of preparation for those seeking to be baptized at the Easter Vigil. The forty days refer to our Lord's time of fasting in the wilderness; and since Sundays are never fast days, Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Lenten Fast.

If you want to learn more about self imposition of ashes, you can read the following verses: 2nd Samuel 13:19; Esther 4:1; Job 2:8, 42:6, Jeremiah 6:26, Daniel 9:3.

Finally, I want to invite you to The Lent Experience. Every Wednesday evening at 5:30pm in Lent, we are asking you to watch a short teaching video on a specific penitential practice observed by Christians for centuries. (Click on the words The Lent Experience above to watch the video) and in our weekly services, Deacon Frank and I will make a few brief comments and we will close with Compline or another short liturgy. The service should end promptly at 6:00pm.

As we are marked with ashes in the same manner that we were signed with the Cross in Baptism, we are also reminded of the life we share in Jesus Christ, the second Adam (Romans 5:17, 6:4). It is in the sure and certain hope that we begin the journey of these forty days, that by hearing and answering our Savior's call to repent, we may enter fully into the joyful celebration of his resurrection. (excerpts from BCP p.542)

Let us prepare our hearts to begin our Lenten journey!
Faithfully through him who loves us,
Rags+

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