This February 18, with the celebration of Ash Wednesdaythe Catholic church begins the liturgical season of the Lenta 40-day period dedicated to reflection, fasting, and spiritual preparation for the Easter week.
During the Eucharists on this day, the faithful receive the imposition of ashes on their foreheads, a symbol of conversion and reminder of human fragility, accompanied by the phrase “dust you are and to dust you will return.”
The ash is obtained from the burning of the palms that Catholics take to churches and processions on Palm Sunday which marks the beginning of the Easter week.
This Wednesday parishes and temples of the country schedule masses from early in the morning, with a high participation of believers who come to begin this time of reflection and renewal of faith.
What is Lent?
The Lent It is an invitation to spiritual renewal and that leads us towards the Easter of Jesus Christ dead and resurrected. It is a proposal to achieve the conversion of the heart, an invitation to return to God, through prayer, help and fasting.
In this period the gospels speak of a time of loneliness of Jesus in it desert immediately after his baptism by John, at the beginning of his public life: “Driven by the Spirit” at desertJesus remains there without eating for forty days; He lives among animals and the angels served him.
There were also forty years that the People of Israel was for him desert did the Promised Land.
The Lent is celebrated from early churchwhen the catechumens They were preparing during a time of conversion to receive the baptism in the celebration of the Easter Vigil.
Very soon, the christian communities they joined the catechumens and they made a similar journey of conversion and preparation for Easter, in memory of their baptism.
From the 4th century the tendency is manifested to constitute it in time of penance and renewal for the entire Church, with the practice of fasting and abstinence
The Lent will culminate with the celebration of Easter Triduumwhich includes the Maundy ThursdayGood Friday and Easter Sundayconsidered the central moment of the Christian calendar.
Pope’s call
Pope Leo XIV proposed that in the Lent make a “fasting” of language and hateful and hurtful words are avoided in the family, in political debates or in communication.
This is how it reads in the traditional message for the Lent of the pontiff that was published last Friday the 13th and where, in addition to invite abstinence from food He urged “also to include other forms of deprivation aimed at making us acquire a more sober lifestyle, since only austerity makes the Christian life strong and authentic.”
And in this regard, he proposed “a very form of abstinence concrete and often little appreciated, that is, to refrain from using words that affect and hurt our neighbors.”
“Let us begin to dismantle language, renouncing the words hurtful, to immediate judgment, to speaking ill of those who are absent and cannot defend themselves, to slander,” the American pontiff added in his message.
He also asked “to learn to measure words now cultivate kindness: in the family, among friends, in the workplace, on social networks, in political debates, in the media and in Christian communities.”
The pope hopes to “live a Lent May it make our ears more attentive to God and to those most in need.” “Let us ask for the strength of a fast that also reaches the tongue, so that the words that hurt decrease and the space for the voices of others grows.
He also invited Christian communities to “become places where the shout of those who suffer find reception and listening generates paths of liberation, making us more willing and diligent to contribute to building the civilization of love.”
