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Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent

" Memento homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris " - " Remember man, you're dust and dust you shall return ", this is the formula traditionally used in the liturgy of the" Ash Wednesday "While we celebrate the Rite of Ashes, which is the rite in which it is scattered on the head of the faithful a bit of ash produced by burning the blessed olive branches " Palm Sunday of the previous year. With the reform of Vatican II, this formula is added in a second alternative, which reads: "Repent and believe the Gospel."

From the thirteenth secolo, per circa cinque secoli, l'imposizione delle ceneri  che il cardinale protovescovo praticava sul capo del pontefice e che si svolgeva per tradizione nella chiesa di S. Anastasia al Palatino, da cui partiva una processione, in cui i fedeli (a piedi scalzi fino al XII secolo) raggiungevano la prima stazione quaresimale della chiesa di S. Sabina sull'Aventino, fu eseguita in silenzio e solo all'inizio del settecento la formula ammonitrice fu recuperata.

Stazione di Santa Sabina

With the "Ash Wednesday ," which follows the last day of Mardi Gras carnival, begins in the Roman Rite " Lent, a period of preparation for the" Easter , "a period of forty days when you and leads through penance, fasting as a symbol of abstention from sin (now limited to " Ash Wednesday" and "Friday "), eating lean meat as a symbol of giving up the waiver luxury, as a symbol of the prayer that God deserves and as a symbol of brotherly love toward others. In the rite Ambrosian, instead the "Lent " whose beginning is delayed for four days, coincides with the first Sunday of Lent.

Pope John Paul II during the rite of ashes

Now, the church of origne, for the first three centuries, contained an additional period of preparation for the "Easter ", probably because the feeling of Christian conversion to God was alive and active, there was only a fasting ascetic - lighting of one or two days, practiced the catechumens. In the fourth century became part of the fasting rites of reconciliation, the place for sinners reconciled with God and that began the Sunday before the VI " Easter " lasted forty days and ended at the ninth hour of Holy Thursday (today as in the Ambrosian rite). In the sixth century as it was forbidden to make penitential rites on Sunday, wanting to keep the forty calendar days of penance, the beginning of path of contrition was moved to Wednesday before the first Sunday Lent, was born the " Ash Wednesday" which is celebrated in the Roman rite.

Ash Wednesday

of JulianFałat

watercolor 1881

The duration of forty days of penitential rites is due to presence of this number in the Bible:

Old Testament

1 forty days of the Flood
2 past forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai

3 forty days it took the explorers Jews to explore the land where they would enter

4 forty days in which the prophet Elijah walked to arrive at Mount Horeb

5 forty days of time, in the preaching of Jonah, God gives to Nineveh before destroying

New Testament

1 forty days that Jesus spent in the desert

2 forty days when Jesus instructed his disciples in the resurrection of Jesus and the 'Ascension

well

1 forty years spent by Israel in the desert.

The Sundays of Lent are also known as the first word dell'introitus, which is the opening song of the Eucharistic celebration that accompanies the celebrant and his ministers at the altar

1 invocavit - Invocabit me, et ego eum exaudiam (Psalm 91.15) - First Sunday of Lent

2 reminiscendi - reminiscendi miserationum tuarum (Psalm 25.6) - Second Sunday of Lent

3 Oculi - Oculi mei semper ad Dominum (Psalm 25, 15) - Third Sunday of Lent

4 Laetare - Laetare, Jerusalem (Isaiah 66.10) - Fourth Sunday of Lent

5 Judica - Judica me, Deus (Psalm 43:1) - Fifth Sunday of Lent

Palmarum 6 - Sunday in Palmisano - Palm Sunday