Did you know... What is the Lenten Frontal?

The Lent Frontal Tester

Last week’s Did You Know considered the way Becket’s assassins demonstrated their penitence (saying sorry and turning away from sin) after his murder. We continue the focus on penitence this week, as we look at the season of Lent.

Ash Wednesday (it was 17 February this year) is the first day of Lent, a season which lasts for forty days (not including Sundays) and ends with Good Friday. Lent is a time when Christians reflect and prepare for the joy and celebration of Easter; some people fast, eat frugally or give up treats, following the example of Jesus, who fasted for forty days and nights in the wilderness.

Ash Wednesday services set the tone for Lent, with sombre readings and hymns and a focus on penitence; and in a custom dating back to the Middle Ages, ashes made from palm crosses are blessed and used to mark crosses on people's foreheads.

The Lenten set was funded with a bequest from the late Paddy Notter, a good friend of the Cathedral. The frontal represents a crown of thorns, symbolic of the sacrifice that Jesus made through his death for our sins. Framed on either side by the pattern of the Cathedral ashlar stonework in shades of gold, green and brown, the thorny crown is appliqued linen and antique gold leather with red piping cord.

The ashlar motif is also used on the priest’s Lenten vestments. In the shadows of the Cathedral quire the gold of the crown gleams, reminding us of the hope we have in Christ amid the darkness and sorrow of sin and death.