Join us on Ash Wednesday :
- 6:45 am in the church: Book of Common Prayer‘s Ash Wednesday service; no Holy Communion
- 7:30 – 8:30 am in the parking lot: Drive-Thru Ashes
- 12 pm in the church: Book of Common Prayer‘s Ash Wednesday service and Holy Communion
- 5 – 6 pm in the parking lot: Drive-Thru Ashes
- 7 pm Book of Common Prayer‘s Ash Wednesday service, Holy Communion, and music. Nursery is available. Our youth group, Episcopal Youth Community (EYC) will not have its regular 7pm meeting; teens, please join us for 7pm worship in the sanctuary.
Drive-Thru Ashes
Drive-Thru Ashes offers busy people a way to receive ashes and a blessing in the comfort of their cars in our church parking lot at 223 S. Pearson Lane, Keller, Texas. All are welcome to drive through and participate, especially those who don’t regularly worship at St. Martin’s. A sign of our busy lives, Ashes To Go is a recent exercise in some liturgical protestant churches (Episcopal, Methodist, and Lutheran) to take the imposition of ashes on foreheads of individuals to public spaces, outside the confines of regular worship spaces. St. Martin’s has offered Drive-Thru Ashes as an evangelical complement to its three Ash Wednesday worship services for the previous two years. Deacon Henry Penner spoke about last year’s Drive-Thru Ashes:
About Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday gets its name from the practice of placing ashes on foreheads as a sign of penitence and humility, with the spoken reminder “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The use of ashes and rough sackcloth to indicate mourning, deep repentance or humility goes back over 3,000 years and intersects many cultures. The ashes are a grimy, dusty reminder that we are created from, live and die as humble, earthly stuff, invited to and yearning for a more exalted connection with our creator God. We meet Christ in the middle on Ash Wednesday. We are confronted by our own frail body; a body that Christ himself accepted;God in human flesh. Ash Wednesday begins Lent, a 40-day time of introspection, moderation, spiritual discipline and preparation before Easter and Jesus’ joyful resurrection.