Ash Wednesday is a call to “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mk 1:15). It inaugurates the Lenten Season. For the next forty days, the Church sets aside for us to prepare for the celebration of the Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. In this penitential season we have the opportunity to make an annual spiritual “tune-up”, a 40-day retreat with Our Lord.
The word Lent is derived from an Anglo-Saxon word lengthen or lencten meaning "spring." We are "to spring" into action, to do the tasks of the season, to prepare for the new growth and graces that overflow from Easter. Spring is the most important season for a farmer, for it determines what crops he will plant. Once decided, he prepares the soil thoroughly and plants the seed carefully, hoping that the seed buried deep in the soil will produce an abundant crop.
During this Lenten spring, joyfully dying to self in order to become that fruitful grain of wheat, “unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit…" (Jn 12:24f).
Let us renew our efforts, and through our Lenten observance, that is, prayer, fasting and almsgiving and master them as we “follow in the footsteps of the poor and crucified Christ” (St. Francis of Assisi).
The Holy Father offers some helpful thoughts on our path of conversion as individuals and as a community. The title of the Holy Father’s message for Lent 2014 is “He became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (cf. 2 Cor 8:9). St Paul was writing to the Christians of Corinth to encourage them to be generous in helping the people in Jerusalem who were in need. What do these words of Saint Paul mean for us Christians today? What does this invitation to poverty, a life of evangelical poverty, mean to us today?
These next seven weeks is a time for you to look deep into your heart, to think about your life and how you have been living it.
Have a Blessed and Fruitful Lent.
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