OpinionPolitics

What Lent Asks of Christians Rethinking Trump

By Kaya Oakes
A priest takes ashes to place on worshippers' foreheads during Ash Wednesday Mass marking the beginning of Lent at the Catedral de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, February 18, 2026. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez
Feb 18, 2026
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Millions of American Christians attend church on Ash Wednesday, and the gesture of marking our foreheads with ashes is formally known as the imposition of ashes. An imposition is a burden or demand. Those ashes are meant not only to be a reminder of our own mortality but also of what faith demands of us in Lent. Among those things is repentance. 

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A priest takes ashes to place on worshippers' foreheads during Ash Wednesday Mass marking the beginning of Lent at the Catedral de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, February 18, 2026. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez