They bring us back to the essential truth of our lives: the Lord alone is God and we are the work of his hands. The ashes remind us who we are and whence we come. It exhorts us to do two things: to return to the truth about ourselves and to return to God and to our brothers and sisters.įirst, to return to the truth about ourselves.
The rite of the imposition of ashes serves as the beginning of this return journey. Return to what is essential: it is the Lord.
It is the season of grace when we put into practice what the Lord asks of us at the beginning of today’s first reading: “Return to me with all your heart” ( Jl 2:12). Lent is indeed the “favourable time” to return to what is essential, to divest ourselves of all that weighs us down, to be reconciled with God, and to rekindle the fire of the Holy Spirit hidden beneath the ashes of our frail humanity. With these words, the Apostle Paul helps us enter into the spirit of the Lenten season. “Behold, now is the favourable time behold, now is the day of salvation!” ( 2 Cor 6:2).
