The ashes—while perhaps the most visible part of Ash Wednesday observances—aren’t the most important.
Lent
Posted inFaith, Your Take
Tell us: What are you doing for Lent this year?
We want to hear about your plans for this season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
Posted inFaith, News
Vatican: No ashes on foreheads this Ash Wednesday
The Vatican asked priests to take special anti-COVID-19 precautions this year when distributing ashes on Ash Wednesday, including sprinkling ashes on the top of people’s heads rather than making a cross on people’s foreheads.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
Covid-19 in the land where Jesus walked
During Jerusalem’s lockdown, my family saw the Holy Land—and each other—with new eyes.
Posted inFaith, The Word
The Word Lent Reflections 2020
Join us throughout the Lenten season as we offer a special presentation of the Gospel, Passion and Resurrection narratives.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
As we grieve the coronavirus, look to Mary, the Mother of Sorrows
Amid the global pandemic of Covid-19 that has spread throughout this Lenten season, calling on the Mother of Sorrows feels all the more urgent.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
The right (and wrong) ways for Catholics to host a Passover Seder
As Christians have become more familiar and neighborly with people of other religious traditions, we have extended that familiarity to appreciation, and sometimes appreciation becomes appropriation.
Posted inFaith, The Good Word
In his Passion, Christ is true to his preaching
The preaching of our Lord in the Gospel of St. Matthew—the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, the parables—has come to a close. Now the preacher embraces his passion.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
This Lent, U.S. Catholics are called to reckon with the sin of capital punishment
In the middle lands of these 40 days, I am burdened by the fact that our society has not yet reckoned with the ongoing sin of capital punishment nor the full extent of our country’s racist past.
Posted inFaith, Vatican Dispatch
Pope Francis to those isolated because of the coronavirus: ‘United to Christ, we are never alone’
In a video address, Pope Francis thanked caregivers and assured his audience that ‘spiritual communion‘ remains strong even during the isolation of the coronavirus epidemic. Gerard O’Connell reports from the Vatican.