Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent — the forty-day season of penitence, fasting, and prayer in preparation for Easter. The forty days (not counting Sundays, which are never fast days) recall Christ's forty-day fast in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–2, Luke 4:1–2), as well as the forty days of Moses on Sinai (Exodus 34:28) and Elijah's journey to Horeb (1 Kings 19:8). The Lenten fast itself is ancient: the Council of Nicaea (325, Canon 5) references a pre-Easter penitential period as an already-established institution, and by the late fourth century a forty-day fast before Easter was observed across both East and West, though the method of counting varied. The specific association of the fast's opening day with ashes developed in the Western church. The use of ashes as a sign of penitence is deeply rooted in the Old Testament: Job repented 'in dust and ashes' (Job 42:6), Mordecai covered himself in sackcloth and ashes (Esther 4:1), and Daniel prayed 'with fasting and sackcloth and ashes' (Daniel 9:3). The prophet Joel's call — 'rend your hearts and not your garments' (Joel 2:13) — is the appointed Old Testament reading for the day and its theological keynote. The imposition of ashes on the heads of public penitents is attested in the Roman Rite from the seventh century. The Gelasian Sacramentary includes prayers for the penitential rite at the start of Lent, and the practice of marking penitents with ashes before their exclusion from the congregation during Lent is documented in Carolingian sources. By the tenth or eleventh century, the rite was extended from public penitents to the whole congregation — a development that reflects the Lenten theology of universal need for repentance. The words spoken at imposition, 'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return' (Genesis 3:19), connect Ash Wednesday to the deepest stratum of biblical anthropology: the mortality that entered through the Fall and the dust from which humanity was fashioned.

The Ash Wednesday liturgy carries a remarkable pastoral directness. The BCP 2019 opens with an 'Invitation to a Holy Lent' that recounts the early Church's Lenten practices — preparation of catechumens for baptism and reconciliation of notorious sinners — and then applies them to the whole congregation: 'I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent.' The imposition of ashes is understood as occurring in the same sign as baptism: the forehead marked with ash in the shape of the Cross echoes the baptismal signing, but now with the dust of mortality rather than the water of new life. The BCP's introductory essay makes this connection explicit. The day is, with Good Friday, one of only two days the BCP appoints for total abstinence and fasting — a distinction that underscores its severity. The Litany of Penitence, a corporate confession expanding on the General Confession, is proper to Ash Wednesday and draws the congregation into specific acknowledgment of sin under multiple categories. The tradition of 'giving up something for Lent' — now often accompanied by 'taking on' a discipline of prayer or service — descends from the ancient Lenten fast, though in significantly softened form. The Eastern churches begin their Great Lent on Clean Monday rather than Wednesday, and do not practice the imposition of ashes, making Ash Wednesday a distinctly Western observance. The Anglican tradition inherited it at the Reformation: the 1549 BCP included a 'Commination against Sinners' for Ash Wednesday that was gradually softened in later editions, and the imposition of ashes, dropped in 1552, was restored in the twentieth century and is now standard in ACNA practice. The custom of burning the previous year's palm branches to produce the ashes — well established by the medieval period — creates a beautiful liturgical cycle linking Palm Sunday and Ash Wednesday.

Felix was a bishop from Burgundy who arrived in England around 630. According to Bede, he came at the invitation of King Sigeberht of East Anglia, who had been baptized during his years of exile in Gaul and wanted a bishop to complete the conversion of his kingdom.

Archbishop Honorius of Canterbury sent Felix to East Anglia, where he established his episcopal seat at Dunwich — then a significant coastal town, now largely lost to the sea. From there, Felix conducted a systematic mission that Bede describes as entirely successful: he 'freed all that province from its long wickedness and unhappiness, bringing it to the faith and the works of righteousness and to the gift of everlasting happiness.'

Felix founded a school modeled on the schools of Kent (themselves modeled on Frankish and Italian precedents) where East Anglian boys could be trained for the priesthood. He also worked alongside the Irish monk Fursey, who established a monastery at Burgh Castle — a collaboration between Roman and Celtic traditions characteristic of the period.

Felix served as bishop for seventeen years and died around 647 or 648. His body was later translated to Soham and eventually to Ramsey Abbey. The loss of Dunwich to the sea over subsequent centuries means that virtually nothing survives of his physical legacy, but his significance in the conversion of eastern England is well established.

Bede provides almost no miracle tradition for Felix, describing his work in straightforwardly historical terms. Later medieval sources — particularly the 12th-century Liber Eliensis — developed Felix's hagiography, but these are distant from the events and were produced in contexts that served the interests of the Ely monastic community.

The loss of Dunwich to coastal erosion from the medieval period onward has meant that physical traces of Felix's legacy have disappeared, though underwater archaeology has located elements of the medieval town. The town of Felixstowe preserves his name.