Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday. I saw in my FB feed that Campus Ministry would be coming to the Canisius College Library to distribute ashes so that students would not lose their study spots. In the twenty years I worked in that Library I don't remember that ever happening on Ash Wednesday. There would certainly be lots of students with the ashes on their foreheads but they had to go over to the chapel to receive them. 

Probably the last time I had the ashes was in the mid-1960's. Maybe 67 at the absolute latest. In later years I always thought it was amusing to see people walking around with dirty foreheads.

Of course Ash Wednesday was also the first day of Lent and the official beginning of the Easter season. Lent was a big deal in our family when I was growing up and especially at dinner time when we were only allowed to eat fish on Fridays during lent. It was a ritual. I was OK with it because I always liked eating fish.

Lent also meant we had to give something up. That usually meant something simple like giving up eating a candy bar every day or maybe not saying curse words.

I was also in the church choir all during my years in grammar school and we did a lot of special singing as Easter approached but during Lent all of our singing was very sacred and solemn.