Trinity Lutheran Church holds Ash Wednesday services, reflecting on start of Lenten season

Published 5:30 am Thursday, February 19, 2026

Trinity Lutheran Church congregation members stood in line to receive a dark cross mark made of palm ashes across their foreheads, commemorating the first day of the Lenten season and a symbol of repentance and mortality on Ash Wednesday.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” Pastor Ben Prohol said as he made the cross on participants’ foreheads.

On Ash Wednesday, Tyler residents participated in services across the region to start the 40-day Christian liturgical season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. From Feb. 18 to April 2, church members like those at Trinity Lutheran and participating Christians will reflect on Jesus Christ’s dying sacrifice to save humanity from their sins leading to Easter morning on April 5.

“It’s nice to have a time to sit and reflect,” Prohol said. “Anything that we do in our self disciplinary devotion or anything that we are personally doing in our lives, we just have to remember that Christ fulfilled all of that, so any sin that I’m struggling with He ultimately nailed that to the cross.”

Many different Christian denominations observe Ash Wednesday, which is traditionally fulfilled through fasting, abstinence from meat, prayers of repentance and receiving ashes on their foreheads made from the burned palm leaves from the previous year’s Palm Sunday celebrations. In the Catholic faith, lent also serves as a call to renew baptismal commitment as other members of the church prepare to be baptized on Easter, reflecting on the death and birth into a new life with Christ.

Prohol said lent serves as a time to also reflect on the persecution of Christians and how suffering, even in your own life, can be given to God.

“Any temptation or suffering that I might feel like I’m going through right now, whether that’s finances, a medical diagnosis or something like that, Christ went through that,” Prohol said. “Any type of persecution that might come one day, and I pray we’re still blessed to be in Tyler, Christ suffered that. So knowing that there is one greater than me who has also gone before me gives a peace at the beginning of this time.”

Prohol said that reminder is helpful when discovering a person is discovering their faith.

“It’s not like a woe was us time,” Prohol said. “He became fully man for us and at the same time fully God so he could win for us, and there are days when it seems so simple and there are other days it seems so immense, and we have to trust and believe it.”

The observance of lent originated in the early 4th century pulling from ancient practices and later standardized by Pope Gregory I with the tradition of Ash Wednesday. The Lenten season begins with Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Thursday at sundown, which then begins the Easter Triduum, a three-day period from Thursday evening to Sunday evening reflecting on the Lord’s journey through the cross, his death and resurrection.

Seth Hardin, attendee at Trinity Lutheran Church’s Ash Wednesday service, said the Lenten season is a time for patience and reflection.

“It’s a good reminder of the rebirth of the cycle and the season,” Hardin said. “You are ash and going back to be ash and it is an eternal cycle that we pass on to the next generation and being a part of that is a major part of (Ash Wednesday).”

Hardin said he appreciated Trinity Lutheran Church for having an Ash Wednesday service.

“I feel like the younger generation doesn’t always do the Wednesday service nearly as much, but I felt like I wanted to come to church,” Hardin said.

After service concluded, the Trinity Lutheran Church members gathered to share a meal and fellowship together.

Prohol said that through remembering Christ’s suffering we remember His sacrifice and when people look at the cross on your forehead and ask about it to share God’s promise to his people.

“As you see it on your forehead, remember the suffering and remember we might have to go through some hard trials in this life, remember the fact that through sin, death entered the world and that yes, we will die but remember that still in the midst of suffering God is doing his work and he will bring it to completion at the end of time when Christ comes back to raise us up out of this dust,” Prohol said. “From dust we came and dust we shall return and from dust we will come again with Christ and this is a promise we have.”