Many people go to church on Ash Wednesday. You will see plenty of people with a mark on their forehead at lunchtime in the Square Mile on that first day of Lent.
But it is not a ‘day of obligation’. You don’t have to be at Mass. I have even known a non Eucharistic service with ashing in Rome.
So it is interesting to find an Ash Wednesday service which is not a Eucharist being held in the City this year.
At 12.30pm on Ash Wednesday 1 March an Ecumenical Liturgy of the Word with Ashing service will take place at St Bartholomew the Less in Smithfield. (Enter via the hospital gateway.)
St Bartholomew the Great will have a Solemn Choral Eucharist at 6pm with Allegri’s Miserere sung during the imposition of ashes.
Other City Churches
St Mary-le-Bow: High Mass with imposition of ashes, 1.05pm.
St Andrew Holborn: Sung Eucharist, 7pm.