*What is Ash Wednesday?
A symbol of the ancient rites with which converted sinners were subjected to penance. It is applied in the form of a cross on the forehead accompanied by the words "Dust you are and dust you will become". It is recommended that the ash come from the branches of the blessed trees on Palm Sunday of the previous year. The ash represents the destruction of the mistakes of the previous year to be these burned.
*And Lent?
The forty days in which Christians prepare for Easter. It is considered a time of penance and purification. celebrated in the Catholic Church, Coptic, Orthodox, Anglican, and a good part of the Protestant Churches (including some Evangelicals), although with different beginnings and durations.
It depends on the church. In the Latin rite (that of Spain) begins today, Ash Wednesday, and ends on Holy Thursday.
*Why 40 days?
The number refers to numerous biblical episodes: the forty days of the flood, the forty years that the Jewish people went through the desert, the forty days that Moses spent at Sinai with God or Elijah on the mountain, the forty days of Jesus in the desert before beginning his public life, etcetera.
*And what do believers have to do?
The Church calls the faithful to confess their grave sins, to do good deeds, to be in solidarity with those who suffer and to renounce the superfluous and sumptuous. The best known and most visible practice, however, is fasting. It is characteristic of this liturgical time since antiquity as a renunciation of the needs of earthly life, but it has evolved over time.
According to Saint Leon, Lent is "a collective retreat of forty days, during which the Church, proposing to her faithful the example of Christ in her desert retreat, prepares herself for the celebration of the paschal solemnities with the purification of the heart and a perfect practice of the Christian life "(This definition is deduced from the analysis of the sermon 42).
