Today is Ash Wednesday The liturgical color is violet.
Saints & Celebrations:
On February 22, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Chair of St. Peter the apostle. In the Ordinary Form, it is a feast, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class II day.
In the Extraordinary Form, we also celebrate St. Paul, apostle. This celebration is a commemoration.
If you’d like to learn more about the Chair of St. Peter, you can click here.
If you’d like to learn more about St. Paul, you can click here.
If you’d like to learn more about St. Peter’s Chair, you can click here.
For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.
Readings:
To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.
Or you can click play to listen to them:
Devotional Information:
According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:
125. In the Roman Rite, the beginning of the forty days of penance is marked with the austere symbol of ashes, which are used in the Liturgy of Ash Wednesday. The use of ashes is a survival from an ancient rite according to which converted sinners submitted themselves to canonical penance. The act of putting on ashes symbolizes fragility and mortality, and the need to be redeemed by the mercy of God. Far from being a merely external act, the Church has retained the use of ashes to symbolize that attitude of internal penance to which all the baptized are called during Lent. The faithful who come to receive ashes should be assisted in perceiving the implicit internal significance of this act, which disposes them towards conversion and renewed Easter commitment.
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