To mark the start of Lent, CHM curator of religion and community history Rebekah Coffman talks about the meaning of ashes on Ash Wednesday and shares a brief history of Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral.

Wednesday, February 22, 2023, marks the beginning of the Lenten season for many Christians. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, Lent is observed for forty days as a time of introspection, symbolic fasting, personal sacrifice, and preparation for Easter Sunday. In Catholicism, this takes form through abstaining from eating meat on commemorative days and Friday

Ash Wednesday derives its name from the ritual of a priest or pastor ceremonially placing ashes on the foreheads of worshippers, often in the shape of a cross. This is accompanied by saying, “Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return,” a nod to the Biblical verse Genesis 3:19 and reminiscent of the phrase often spoken at Christian funerals “ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” The ashes used in services come from burned palm branches and have material symbolism. In Christian tradition, the palm is closely associated with the person of Jesus through the biblical story of his entry to Jerusalem commemorated on Palm Sunday, with the palm branch itself an ancient symbol of victory, peace, and eternal life.

Palm branches used in celebrating Palm Sunday are saved from the previous year and then ritually burned to create ashes for the next year’s services. Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago’s Near North Side neighborhood has held an annual “burning of the palms” event the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday for decades. Saved palms are brought to Holy Name’s courtyard on “Shrove Tuesday” (also known as “Fat Tuesday”), a day that celebratorily bridges the passing of the last year into the reflective start of Lent the next day. In a 1975 Chicago Defender article, Rev. James. J. Jakes of Holy Name notes the burning of palms as symbolic for the “burning out of our lives those things that [should] not be there.”