NATCHEZ — With a dark smudge across their foreheads, many Miss-Lou residents entered into a season of reflection and prayer Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday, 46 days before Easter, begins the Lenten season for many western Christians, and in churches across the Miss-Lou, worshippers filed through the nave to have a cross made of ashes smeared on their forehead, the minister saying, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

Lent is a 40-day period of fasting and prayer observed by Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists and other Christian groups that follow a liturgical calendar.

It begins 46 days before Easter because fasting is not observed on Sundays.

For Natchez Catholic Darlene Christian, the imposition of ashes serves as a starting point to especially meditate on the reality that Jesus Christ was crucified and died for her sins, she said.

It’s also an act of humility.

“It is our symbol of humbling ourselves to God,” Christian said.

Even though Ash Wednesday has not historically been a Presbyterian practice, the Rev. Noelle Read, co-pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Natchez, said the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has in recent decades reclaimed the Christian liturgical heritage as something important to the Christian life.

Lent is a part of that heritage, and Wednesday FPC had a service for the imposition of ashes.

“It is a reminder of our frailty, a preparation for Easter, a time of reflection, of remembrance of the work of Christ,” Read said.

Ash Wednesday seems to be one of the biggest days of the Christian year, and many lay people seem to especially look forward to it, said retired Episcopal priest the Rev. Sam Tomlinson. Tomlinson served as celebrant at Church of the Good Shepherd in Vidalia Wednesday.

“The Bible says we bear the image of the man of dust — that is Adam — and we will bear the image of the man of Heaven, that is Christ,” Tomlinson said.

“As much as we run away from death and are afraid of death, we welcome the chance of just facing it. That is one of the attractions of Ash Wednesday.”

Ruth McWilliams, program coordinator at St. Mary Basilica, said the ashes serve to remind Christians of their total dependence on God.

“We come into this world by God’s grace with nothing and we go back to our creator with nothing,” McWilliams said.

“(The ashes) are a symbol, a reminder, of our creation and our need of God at all times.”

But the ashes are also a statement about what comes at the end of Lent — Easter.

“They are a symbol to the world of our Christianity and our faith in resurrection,” McWilliams said.