Amid noisy downtown Miami, they flock to a quiet ritual. A look inside Ash Wednesday mass

Outside Gesù Church in downtown Miami, sirens blared and horns honked in their usual weekday fashion but inside, hundreds of Catholics practiced the solemn ritual of Ash Wednesday. They left bearing the familiar mark of faith on their foreheads.

The tradition is recognized by Christians from many denominations, and marks the beginning of the holy season of Lent, a time for reflection and repentance in preparation for the celebration of Easter.

“May the ashes be for us a gentle reminder of the shortness of this life,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski said during the mass. “As Catholic Christians, our task is not for us to change the Gospel ... our task is to allow the Gospel and its demands to change us.”

Wenski led the midday mass at Miami’s oldest Catholic Church, praying over the congregation — in English and Spanish — and delivering ashes in the shape of a cross on the foreheads of attendees. “Repent and believe in the Gospel,” Wenski said to each person.

The ashes are typically created from the palms used during Palm Sunday mass, where they’re burned and crushed into a fine black powder. After the ash ritual, attendees received Communion, sang the Lord’s Prayer and offered one another a sign of peace.

The ashes are a reminder of the mortality of life, Wenski said after mass.

“I always tell people that we can call ourselves practicing Catholics, because this life is our one time chance to practice until we get it down right,” he said. “The older you get you realize how short it really is.”

Lent, the 40-day period before Easter which concludes on Holy Thursday, is a time when Christians will fast, pray and deepen their connection with God. The number 40 is a reference to the Bible when Jesus spent 40 days and nights fasting in the desert, and the 40 years the Hebrews spent in the desert as they left the slavery of Egypt, Wenski said. It’s also an invitation for many Christians to renew their commitment to living a life of faith by correcting their faults.

“Lent is a call for us to exodus, to come out of sinful habits that we’ve acquired or our hardness of heart so that we can pass over from death to life, from sin to forgiveness,” Wenski said.

Mass attendee Jean Bernard Philippeaux said he will be most likely be giving up meat for Lent this year. Beyond that, he said he will “try to be focused more on God and what he would want me to do and not try to be of this world. In other words, try to be like him in every way possible. That’s the task.”

Philippeaux, an usher for his church Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Kendall, said he’s been attending Ash Wednesday mass every year since he was a child. “It’s to remind us where we came from,” he said. “We are from dirt, from sand and from that we shall return.”

This story was produced with financial support from Trish ad Dan Bell and from donors comprising the South Florida Jewish and Muslim Communities, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.