One of the counter-intuitive blessings of Lent is that it is long enough to be tedious. It’s simply not possible (at least in my experience) to keep up a state of intense spiritual activity for the whole forty days (or forty-six, if we count the Sundays of Lent). Forty days is time enough to start out feeling very high-minded about what one has chosen to give up as a penance or take on as a devotional practice, and to come down to earth with the humbling recognition that we’re not quite at the level of holiness we thought we were.
American Catholics will begin Lent a little differently this year by having blessed ashes sprinkled over our heads rather than placed on our foreheads in the form of a cross. The sprinkling of ashes on the crown of the head is a very old tradition still followed in Rome, though rarely in the United States. An instruction from the Vatican on how to safely celebrate Ash Wednesday in the midst of the pandemic has introduced many Catholics to this practice for the first time.