“Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning. Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord your God. For gracious and merciful is he”. Joel 2:12,13)
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of a new liturgical season called LENT which runs until the evening of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday. The cardinal virtues of this season are prayer, fasting abstinence and almsgiving. We are invited to embark on a journey of self-awareness leading to transformation and transcendence ultimately submerging oneself in the love of God. Self-awareness is achieved through prayer, meditation and personal reflection. Through prayer we rediscover who we are as created in the image and likeness of God. One of the major aspects of this season is that we trace the cross on our forehead with ashes to remind us that we came from dust and dust shall we return. Yes, this return is the most important thing for us in this season of Lent and in prayer we become aware of God’s love for us and how unworthy and sinful we are. We become aware of the temptations of the flesh and this world.
In this season of lent we are invited to enter to the experience of Christ in the desert and fight against the evils. In this war against the evil we need to master our flesh which leads us to the second aspect of lent that is fasting and abstinence. Through fasting and abstinence we are able to master our flesh and earthily desires and focus on our soul and its direction in life that is heaven and resurrection. In this mastering and being aware of our direction it becomes clear that we are to follow Christ.
This leads to us the third part of lent that is almsgiving which is love of the neighbor or Christian charity. Yes this is a season, a time to embark on a journey into ones self and recognize our true identity and repent and change our ways and become authentically the children of God. It’s a time to discard all that is evil and unfitting to the nature of the children of God and mend our hearts through reconciliation and love. All our Lenten practices such as stations of the cross, prayers, scripture or spiritual readings, sacrament of reconciliation, fasting and charitable works may lead us to God. May you all have a blessed lent and a great journey of repentance and reconciliation with God and one another. God bless.