Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent — the forty-day season of penitence, fasting, and prayer in preparation for Easter. The forty days (not counting Sundays, which are never fast days) recall Christ's forty-day fast in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–2, Luke 4:1–2), as well as the forty days of Moses on Sinai (Exodus 34:28) and Elijah's journey to Horeb (1 Kings 19:8). The Lenten fast itself is ancient: the Council of Nicaea (325, Canon 5) references a pre-Easter penitential period as an already-established institution, and by the late fourth century a forty-day fast before Easter was observed across both East and West, though the method of counting varied. The specific association of the fast's opening day with ashes developed in the Western church. The use of ashes as a sign of penitence is deeply rooted in the Old Testament: Job repented 'in dust and ashes' (Job 42:6), Mordecai covered himself in sackcloth and ashes (Esther 4:1), and Daniel prayed 'with fasting and sackcloth and ashes' (Daniel 9:3). The prophet Joel's call — 'rend your hearts and not your garments' (Joel 2:13) — is the appointed Old Testament reading for the day and its theological keynote. The imposition of ashes on the heads of public penitents is attested in the Roman Rite from the seventh century. The Gelasian Sacramentary includes prayers for the penitential rite at the start of Lent, and the practice of marking penitents with ashes before their exclusion from the congregation during Lent is documented in Carolingian sources. By the tenth or eleventh century, the rite was extended from public penitents to the whole congregation — a development that reflects the Lenten theology of universal need for repentance. The words spoken at imposition, 'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return' (Genesis 3:19), connect Ash Wednesday to the deepest stratum of biblical anthropology: the mortality that entered through the Fall and the dust from which humanity was fashioned.

The Ash Wednesday liturgy carries a remarkable pastoral directness. The BCP 2019 opens with an 'Invitation to a Holy Lent' that recounts the early Church's Lenten practices — preparation of catechumens for baptism and reconciliation of notorious sinners — and then applies them to the whole congregation: 'I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent.' The imposition of ashes is understood as occurring in the same sign as baptism: the forehead marked with ash in the shape of the Cross echoes the baptismal signing, but now with the dust of mortality rather than the water of new life. The BCP's introductory essay makes this connection explicit. The day is, with Good Friday, one of only two days the BCP appoints for total abstinence and fasting — a distinction that underscores its severity. The Litany of Penitence, a corporate confession expanding on the General Confession, is proper to Ash Wednesday and draws the congregation into specific acknowledgment of sin under multiple categories. The tradition of 'giving up something for Lent' — now often accompanied by 'taking on' a discipline of prayer or service — descends from the ancient Lenten fast, though in significantly softened form. The Eastern churches begin their Great Lent on Clean Monday rather than Wednesday, and do not practice the imposition of ashes, making Ash Wednesday a distinctly Western observance. The Anglican tradition inherited it at the Reformation: the 1549 BCP included a 'Commination against Sinners' for Ash Wednesday that was gradually softened in later editions, and the imposition of ashes, dropped in 1552, was restored in the twentieth century and is now standard in ACNA practice. The custom of burning the previous year's palm branches to produce the ashes — well established by the medieval period — creates a beautiful liturgical cycle linking Palm Sunday and Ash Wednesday.

Perpetua was a young married woman of high social standing, probably in her mid-twenties. Felicity was a pregnant slave-woman imprisoned alongside her. They were arrested along with several others (including Revocatus, Saturninus, and Secundulus) during the persecution initiated by Emperor Septimius Severus around 202–203.

The most remarkable source for their death is the Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis, a martyr account that includes a first-person diary section. This diary is genuinely attributed to Perpetua herself — the earliest extant autobiographical writing by a Christian woman, and among the earliest from any woman in the ancient world. Perpetua recorded her visions during imprisonment, her spiritual preparation for death, and her encounter with her pagan father in her final days. The document is unpolished, emotionally raw, and historically invaluable. A later redactor added a frame narrative describing the final combat in the arena and the deaths of Perpetua and Felicity.

Felicity, eight months pregnant at arrest, gave birth to a daughter in prison on the day before the public games. The sources confirm this fact and the tradition that she was then executed alongside the group.

Augustine of Hippo preached on Perpetua and Felicity (Sermo 280, 281) and cited them frequently as examples of divine grace working through female witnesses. The Depositio Martyrum (354) lists them prominently. Tertullian, Augustine's predecessor in North Africa, may have known them or the early tradition about them, though he does not mention them by name.

Traditionally, Perpetua's final trial is described in the redacted portion of the Passio: she and Felicity were forced to face wild animals in the arena before a crowd. A leopard attacked and killed Felicity. Perpetua was attacked by a wild cow and severely wounded; she then directed one of the gladiators' swords to her own throat to hasten death. The accounts emphasize her courage and composure, and traditions speak of heavenly visions she experienced during her ordeal. Some accounts report that the crowd recognized extraordinary spiritual power in her death.