You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Wednesday, March 6th, 2019.

It is also Ash Wednesday.

And I would like to welcome you all to the important season of repair, which we call Lent.

So today on Ash Wednesday, we are somebody going to talk about

the symbols that we see at Ash Wednesday Mass, what they mean, and how they should

motivate us to really jump into Lent and live Lent well. So the most clear thing that you're probably going to see at Mass today is the

ashes. We call it Ash Wednesday because when we go to Ash Wednesday Mass, we receive ashes on our

forehead. Everyone, no matter how old they are, is welcome

to come forward and a person from the congregation will take their thumb and draw a cross on your

forehead out of ashes. Now, this seems sort of strange, and it's important to at least get an idea where this

practice comes from. Well, this practice comes from long, long ago in the Bible before Jesus

was even on the scene. Long ago, when someone was very sad or had kind of reached the low point,

they would do something sort of strange. They would sit in the dust and cover themselves with

ashes. Now, why would they do this? Well, they would do this as assigned to themselves and assigned to the

community that they had reached a low point in their life. And it's not only a low point. We're not

going to just sit in this low point. It's a turning point. I have been headed in one direction,

probably a bad direction, but now I'm marking

this by putting ashes on myself as the end of my going in that direction, and I'm going to turn around

and head in a different direction. That is what Ashes mean.

I have reached the low point and I'm going to turn around and go in a different direction.

That is what Ash Wednesday is about.

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