Today we celebrate Ash Wednesday. With today’s liturgy, the universal Church starts, once again, the journey of Lent. I must admit that, growing up, Lent for me was just a season in which we were supposed to give something up (like chocolates, sweets, pastries, or something like that), make sacrifices and penance and abstain from meat on Fridays. Lent was simply a season in which we could see the different shades of violet used by the Priest in the liturgy, pray the Way of the Cross on Fridays, have what I thought were shorter masses (since the Gloria was not sung, and (at least in my country) see the statutes covered with violet cloths.
However, I never fully understood the real purpose of it all, because I did not see any connection between Lent and Easter. After years of participating in a serious itinerary of adult faith formation, and after my studies for priesthood, I have come to discover that Lent, as a liturgical season, has a meaning only in view of Easter. In and of itself, Lent has no liturgical purpose. Indeed, as we can see in today’s readings, Lent is a time that comes to call us to convert from our sins, to return to the Lord and to prepare ourselves to experience His immense love and mercy. This love and mercy are manifested primordially in Jesus Christ’s Paschal Mystery, which stands at the center of the Easter season.
Turn Your Heart
In the first reading, the prophet Joel invites us to give more importance to turning our hearts to the Lord than to worry about external practices. He says: “rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God.” Immediately he says: “for gracious and merciful is he, slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.” Here we can see the prophet strongly inviting us not to be afraid to accept and recognize what is in our hearts: our selfishness, our pride, our fleshly inclinations, our inability to accept others, our tendency to judge…and to return to the Lord, begging for a new nature and receiving His forgiving love.
In a similar way, St. Paul tells us: “we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled with God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” St. Paul is urging us that, in this Lent, we may contemplate the mystery of the transformation we receive by Christ’s redemptive love. We, who relying on our strength alone, are not able to break free from our sin, are invited to see how, in Christ we can be made fully righteous. In Christ, we can pass from thinking only of ourselves to think about the needs of others, we can pass from building ourselves in everything to desire the last places, we can pass from being slaves to our passions to live lives of chastity and purity. This is possible because of the immense power of Christ’s death and resurrection, which we will be celebrating for fifty days in Easter.
Enter Your Heart, See What is There
That is why this time of Lent is a time to enter our hearts and to recognize what really there is in them. We are invited to enter the secret of our souls and recognize our brokenness and our poverty. Only thus can we experience fully the power of the restoring and healing power of God, which is Easter.
Let us return to the Lord, brothers and sisters! Let us take this time of Lent seriously and take advantage of what St. Paul also says in the second reading: “behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the of salvation.” This is the season of Lent that we have. This is the time to have to let the Word of God enlighten us and call us to conversion. This can be the Lent in which we truly recognize who we are and experience the need to beg the Lord for a new nature. Living in this time like this will help us to enter Easter confidently and trust that the Lord will help us die with Him so that we may also resurrect with him to a new life. May the Lord grant us all a Lent filled with the desire to turn our lives totally to Him.
[Readings: Joel 2:12-18; 2 Corinthians 5:20—6:2; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18]
