{"id":137283,"date":"2026-02-18T13:10:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T13:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/137283\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T13:10:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T13:10:06","slug":"archbishop-hicks-leading-first-ash-wednesday-at-st-patricks-cathedral-in-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/137283\/","title":{"rendered":"Archbishop Hicks leading first Ash Wednesday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

The newly-installed Archbishop Ronald Hicks<\/a> will be leading Ash Wednesday in New York City, one of the busiest days on the Catholic calendar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The holiday marks the start of Lent<\/a>, which is the 40-day period of fasting, prayer and self-reflection leading up to Easter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hicks was installed just 12 days ago and will be hosting Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral<\/a> in the morning to begin the most solemn season for Catholics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his homily Tuesday, Hicks asked congregants to reflect on how they plan to use this time to get God back into the center of their lives.<\/p>\n

Ashes will be distributed all day until 9 p.m.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

What does Ash Wednesday mean? \u00a0<\/p>\n

The holiday is a day of public Catholicism as participants who attend service receive ashes on their foreheads in the shape of a cross. It symbolizes mortality and sorrow for sins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is also the beginning of the season of Lent before the observances of Jesus’ death on Good Friday and resurrection on Easter Sunday.<\/p>\n

During this time, the faithful devote themselves to prayer, charitable deeds, fasting and other forms of self-discipline. Catholics commonly give something up that they find difficult to do without.<\/p>\n

They also abstain from eating meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and all the Fridays during the season.<\/p>\n

The season of Lent ends on Holy Thursday, three days before Easter. \u00a0<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The newly-installed Archbishop Ronald Hicks will be leading Ash Wednesday in New York City, one of the busiest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4840,9,56,63,65,64,7675,52440],"class_list":["post-137283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-catholic-church","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-religion","tag-st-patrick039s-cathedral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}