Ash Wednesday – which this year falls on Wednesday, February 22 – marks the start of Lent, the annual Christian penitential season that ends on Easter Day.

And this year “Ash Wednesday” takes on an especially poignant meaning.

February 22 is also the first anniversary of the earthquake which killed 185 people in Christchurch last year, injured hundreds and caused massive damage to Christchurch, including to the city’s two landmark cathedrals.

And this coming Ash Wednesday, Wellington’s own Anglican and Catholic cathedral communities will gather to remember and pray for those who died, were injured or who suffered loss in Christchurch at 12:51pm last February 22.

All Wellingtonians are invited to next Wednesday’s special service, which will be held at the Wellington Cathedral of St Paul, on the corner of Hill and Molesworth Streets, Thorndon, beginning at 12.30pm.

Cathedral bells will toll half-muffled before the service.

The service will be jointly hosted by the Very Rev Frank Nelson (Dean of St Paul’s) and Fr James Lyons (Parish Priest of the Catholic Sacred Heart Cathedral), with short prayers and music from the combined choirs of the cathedrals.

Being Ash Wednesday, there will be an opportunity for those who wish to receive ashes and for people to light candles in memory of those who died or were injured in Christchurch last February 22

Special prayer

Lord of heaven and earth,

Rock of ages, Creator God:

the world and all it holds

are the work of your hands

and the gift of your love.

We praise your greatness and your goodness.

Our earth has quaked and trembled,

yielding to pressures beneath her,

bringing death and destruction, suffering and loss.

Yet we believe we stand on holy ground.

In Jesus, you have walked our streets and

climbed our hills and shared our homes.

We know in our hearts that you are with us still.

Strengthen the courage of those who lost loved ones,

property or livelihoods in the Christchurch disaster

and the many injured in mind or body.

Bless the efforts of those entrusted with rebuilding

this broken community.

Help us turn fear to hope and anger to resolve.

Let nothing disturb our faith in you or in one another,

or shake our will to live together in harmony and peace.

We make this our prayer, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

– Fr James Lyons, Sacred Heart Cathedral