As these 40 Days begin again – and with them, the biggest crowds of the year converge in most places – a fruitful and Blessed Lent to one and all.
While the Pope gave a practical guide to living the season well at this morning’s weekly Audience, per immemorial custom, this Ash Wednesday’s principal rite doesn’t come until evening with the penitential procession on the Avventine Hill and Mass at the basilica of Santa Sabina, the first of Rome’s stational churches.
Even beyond the ashes sprinkled on his head, today’s traditional rubrics give the Roman Pontiff a further, uniquely pointed “memento” of his mortal weakness – known as the “papal simplex,” the “penitential” miter donned by a Pope on this day is the one in which, in time, he will be buried. (It’s likewise employed on Good Friday.)