Members of the SMU community gather for noon Mass in Perkins for Ash Wednesday 2010. (Michael Danser/ The Daily Campus)

Many Christians walked around campus with dark gray smudges on their foreheads after attending one of the Ash Wednesday services held in Perkins Chapel Wednesday.

It was Ash Wednesday, a Christian holiday that marks the beginning of the Christian Lent season, a time when many Christians choose to fast in some way, with an attitude of reverence and prayer, in preparation for Easter.

During the Ash Wednesday service, the sign of the cross is marked in ash on the heads of members of the congregation. The ashes traditionally come from the palms used in the previous year’s Palm Sunday.

Reverend Stephen Rankin led a protestant service at 12:05 p.m. in Perkins Chapel, and Father Tony Lackland led a Catholic Mass at 5 p.m. People of all denominations and faiths were welcomed at both services, unified by the symbol of the Christian cross on their foreheads.

When applying the ashes, congregation members were told to “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Director of the SMU Catholic Campus Ministry group Frank Santoni said that Ash Wednesdaywas one of their most attended services on campus. He said that there is “something about the grittiness of ashes” that works so well as “a symbol of penitence.”
Santoni recognizes that walking around with the ashes on your face in a place where people are concerned about keeping up appearances, as SMU students tend to be, is a very big deal.

SMU Junior Rachel Washington said that she tries to go to Mass every Sunday, but she attended the Ash Wednesday service yesterday because she made a “commitment to God.”

“If my friends have special days, I do my best to show up to them,” Washington said. “So why would I not do the same for God?”