by Sister Luisa Almendra
If you prefer, watch the recorded video by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QznsB_2Pcro
Today, Ash Wednesday, we are all invited to look at our existence as a journey: a forty-day journey that we call Lent. In the biblical context, where this time originated, this number is associated with the material universe and the time of life, with its trials, weaknesses, joys, and sufferings.
We can, therefore, say that the forty days of each Lent speak to us of our lives, as a time and a journey in which we are permanently challenged to look at our humanity, on the way to another reality: the reality of the risen Jesus.
The words repeated on this day, “…you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19), and the gesture of bowing our heads and receiving ashes is a call to recognize that we are a fragile humanity.
And from this weakness of ours, all of us, women and men, are called to look to Jesus Christ and learn to see life not as an ascent to the successes of this world, but as a descent into the love that knows how to die to itself for friends and enemies; the love that knows how to forgive and smile again; the love that lives on gratitude and blessing; the crucified and transformed love.
Today, Ash Wednesday, we are all called to remember what defines the path of each day of our lives: transformed love. We are not omnipotent or powerful; we are dust, and to dust we shall all return. We are a fragile earth, seeking to be transformed by the love of a crucified Jesus Christ.
Therefore, the time of our lives, or the path that begins each Lent anew, is a path where penance is solely and exclusively the penance of love. In the heart and actions of each of us, we place the crucified love of Jesus, which sustains and transforms our fragility, always prone to so many feelings and affirmations of self sufficiency and superiority.
We walk towards a God of crucified love, who overthrows all forms of selfish and insensitive success, elevating those who, in the silence of each day, listen to the pain and joy of others and make them known.
Let us take this path, the invitation of Pope Leo XIV, who in this Lent invites us to allow ourselves to be blessed in our fragile humanity:
– to develop in ourselves the gift of listening, capable of being troubled by all forms of suffering that are close to us.
– and to live the fasting of those who feed on bread, but also, and above all, of those who feed on the Word of God; the true Word that satisfies us and warns us against words that strike and wound; the authentic Word capable of disarming
words laden with wounds and disillusionment; the only Word that can transform words of hatred into words of hope and peace.
Let us walk this path together, improving the quality of the time we dedicate to our prayer, also sharing what we miss and learning to fast from words that destroy life in ourselves and in others, remembering that “…On God’s path there is no rest; to stop is to lose everything” (Fr. Jen Gailhac).
