Forty Days
Today is Ash Wednesday and begins the 40 day period of Lent in the Roman Catholic and other Western Christian churches (Eastern churches start on a different day as do the Oriental churches. This year, Eastern Rite churches begin Lent on 10-March. It begins on Clean Monday and last 42 days. The Coptic Church begins Lent on 03-March this year and it lasts 55 days. For Western and Eastern Rite churches, Sundays are excluded from Lenten observation. In the Coptic Church they are not). It is a period of fast and abstinence. The ashes distributed on the forehead are a symbol of repentance from the Jewish tradition of using ashes and sackcloth to signify repentance. I am not aware of any official requirement to use sackcloth during the Lenten period, but I have seen a strip of sackcloth draped over crucifixes in church and a number of Catholics I know carry around a small piece. It is not part of my tradition and I do not participate in that manner. (I recall first observing the use of sackc...