Ash Wednesday Online Service Feb. 17
Join us online for a worship service for Ash Wednesday on February 17 at 8:00 a.m. The preacher will be Dr. Sam Laurent, campus minister and young adult missioner for The Episcopal Center at Duke. Video for the service will be livestreamed below.
View/Download the worship guide.
During this service, individuals typically receive the marking of ashes in the shape of a cross on their foreheads as a reminder of their mortality and repentance of their sins-ashes to ashes. Because we are not able to meet in person this year, we are inviting worshippers to observe this practice in another way. For this year's service, we encourage you to have ashes, dirt, or oil available for use during the service. For any who desire to make their own ashes, we encourage you to burn palms you have saved from last year. If you no longer have a palm branch to burn, write a particular sin or way you've fallen short of God's best ways for us on a small piece of paper to burn to create the ash. Do not mix ashes with water as they will create a caustic form of lye. If you prefer not to use ashes, we invite you to use dirt, which also serves as a sign of our mortality-dust to dust. At the least, have olive oil to use to make a sign of the cross on your forehead when the time comes in the service.
In preparation for Ash Wednesday, the Chapel's director of Religious Life, the Rev. Kathryn Lester-Bacon, offers a poem she wrote for the day. It begins:
Take dust and dip the finger in its pool.
Take ash and wipe the forehead clean of guise.
Mark countenance, that earthly vestibule.
Claim death upon the entrance; then, arise.
One further way the Chapel observes Ash Wednesday is by having the carillon be silent instead of playing the usual 5:00 p.m. weekday recital.