DU will mark Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Lenten season with four services Feb. 22 at Evans Chapel.
DU Chaplain Gary Brower will lead nondenominational services at 7:45 a.m. and 4:45 p.m. Brother John Ignatius, a local priest, will lead Roman Catholic services at noon and 9 p.m. Services are timed so members of the DU community can attend services before or after work or class.
Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, the 40-day period leading up to Easter (except for Sundays), which Brower says signifies a time for worshippers to participate in the death and resurrection of Jesus through “prayer, repentance and self-denial.”
“The 40-day period mirrors the 40 days that, according to the New Testament, Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness between his baptism and the beginning of the public ministry, as well as the 40 years that the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness between their exodus from Egypt and their entry into the Promised Land,” Brower says.
DU’s Ash Wednesday services will include the imposition of ashes, a sacrificial symbolism of penance in which worshippers receive a mark of ashes on their foreheads in the shape of a cross.
For more information about the nondenominational services, contact Brower at gary.brower@du.edu. For more information about the Roman Catholic services, contact Ignatius at brjohnignatius@gmail.com.