Worship at the Abbey

Sung Eucharist with the Imposition of Ashes

17 February 2010 at 5:00 pm

Ash Wednesday

The Lord is a great God, O that today you would listen to his voice.  Harden not your hearts.
Lent Gospel acclamation, after Psalm 95: 3, 7, 8

Ashes are an ancient sign of penitence; from the middle ages it became the custom to begin Lent by being marked with the sign of the cross in ash.  So, we are all invited to be marked with this sign as a sign of penitence and a symbol of our mortality.

Join us this Ash Wednesday, as the Abbey prepares for the forty days of Lent, which represents the forty days Jesus was in the wilderness being tested by Satan.  This period of self-examination, penitence, self-denial, and study will lead us ultimately to the darkened atmosphere of Holy Week; the Passion and death of our Lord.  The colour purple, the colour of mourning but also of sovereignty, is used throughout Lent representing both Christ’s suffering and kingship.

Now is the healing time decreed
for sins of heart and word and deed,
when we in humble fear record
the wrong that we have done the Lord.  (Latin, before 12th century)

Sung by the Lay Vicars of Westminster Abbey.