Sorry I didn’t see this question yesterday. My parish, St. Bartholomew’s, has three Ash Wednesday services with Imposition of Ashes: one in the morning, one at noon, and one in the evening. Although last year for the noon service I went to St. Philip’s in Donelson, because it’s closer to my office.
As I mentioned upthread, for logistical reasons we went to a Nazarene church last night and it was uncomfortable. We were supposed to put the ashes on our foreheads ourselves! Or we could have the ash-bearer to it, but they were just volunteers, not clergy. I think it’s the first time in my life I was bothered by the lack of Apostolic Succession.
Definitely in New Orleans. But seeing that it’s the day after Mardi Gras, when I was younger I used to think that people had passed out drunk in the streets and all had dirty foreheads.
Born and raised a Catholic in one of the most Catholic parts of the UK, so yes, when I was young it was very common (and still is). At school, we were all marched to the parish church on Holy Days of Obligation, including Ash Wednesday, and were given ashes on our foreheads.
Working in a Catholic school, yes, I saw a lot of people with ashes on them yesterday. But after work, when I went to the supermarket, I didn’t see anyone else similarly marked, and I got a lot of double takes when people saw me. It didn’t help that the Eucharistic minister who applied them is a friend, who took the opportunity to really grind his thumb into the pot and make a HUGE, very black cross on my head. Usually it’s more like a faint smudge, especially by the end of the day. At least I didn’t get the “scuse me, you have a dirty face” (kindly meant) that you usually get: it was clear from the enormous cross that I was a religious lunatic who should be avoided. I’d have wiped it off, but it was ingrained in me in my early childhood that you shouldn’t do so. Funny how so much of Catholicism has worn off or been actively discarded, but that sticks with me.
Would it be out of order to mention that I really have a problem accepting the hypocrisy of reading this part of the Gospel in the same service as covering your head in ash, to be worn as witness for the rest of the day?
In that vein, I once had a rector who, every Ash Wednesday, would say something like this. “People always ask me if after leaving the service they should remove the ashes from their forehead. On the one hand, Jesus tells us not to display our piety before others and to pray in secret. On the other hand, He also tells us not to hide our light under a bushel, but to put it on a lampstand. So I tell people this: do whichever makes you most uncomfortable.”
Not all that common in Minneapolis. And by that, I mean, maybe 2-3% of people, not including the ones I saw at the service I went to. But at the same time, it’s early March in Minneapolis. People wear hats. Also, a large public university is not the most devout place in the world.
In Buffalo, you could find yourself in the minority in many places if you don’t have ashes. I’ve been chastised before for not having ashes; the opposite of those who find others commenting about the dirt on their foreheads.
Turns out it is pretty common in Albuquerque. Never noticed it until a few years ago. At that job the equipment got a lot of dirt on it, which ended up on our hands, then our faces. So clueless me tells a co-worker he has a dirt on his face and hands him a rag. Another co-worker clued me in.
