Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, Archbishop of Philadelphia, will celebrate Mass and distribute ashes following the Mass on:

Ash Wednesday, February 17, 1999
12:05 p.m.
Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul
18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia

Ash Wednesday signifies the beginning of Lent for Christians throughout the world. Lent is the penitential season of prayer and sacrifice from Ash Wednesday through Holy Thursday, in preparation for Easter. Catholics throughout the archdiocese will visit their parish churches to receive the blessed ashes, which are marked in the sign of a cross on the foreheads of the faithful. The ashes used are the ashes of burned palm from the previous Palm Sunday. The symbolic ashes remind the faithful of their mortality.

All Catholics fourteen years of age and older are obliged to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and all Fridays of Lent. All Catholics eighteen years of age and older, up to and including their fifty-ninth birthday, are bound to fast by limiting themselves to a single full meal on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, while the other two meals on those days are to be light. They are also encouraged to attend Mass and to receive the Holy Eucharist daily, to celebrate frequently the Sacrament of Penance, to undertake spiritual reading, especially the study of the Sacred Scriptures, and to participate in parish Lenten devotions as well as Lenten education programs.

In the chapel adjacent to the Cathedral, distribution of ashes will take place during the following Masses: 6:30 a.m., 7:15 a.m., 8:00 a.m., 12:35 p.m., 1:05 p.m. and 5:15 p.m.

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Contact
Marie Kelly
Associate Director
215 587-3747