Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the 40-day period of reflection and fasting that precedes the Holy Week and Easter. (Photo AFP)

Lent is the period of forty days which come before Easter in the Christian Tradition. Beginning on Ash Wednesday (March 2), Lent is a season of reflection and preparation before the celebration of Easter, commemorating the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ for us and for our salvation!

By observing the forty day period of Lent Christians remember and experience Jesus Christ’s withdrawal into the desert for forty days in preparation to start His public life and the mission entrusted to Him by God the Father.
The imposition of ashes on the forehead or head on Ash Wednesday is a Biblical symbol of repentance, reminding the faithful of man’s sinfulness before God and his mortality. The priest who imposes the ashes on Ash Wednesday says, “Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”

The ashes can represent the ‘emptiness’ behind our search for worldly rewards and remind us that worldliness is like the dust that is carried away by a slight gust of wind. 

His Holiness Pope Francis’ Lenten Message for the Year 2022: “Sow Seeds of Goodness”
 It is a custom in the Catholic Church that every year the Holy Father proposes a timely theme for meditation and reflection during Lent by the faithful and gives a short message based on the same. In his message for Lent 2022, Pope Francis invites the faithful to sow seeds of goodness, so that we might reap a bountiful harvest of salvation for ourselves and for others.

This spiritual endeavour is to be practised in a context in which humanity faces great threats from almost all the spheres connected with human life and existence.

At a moment like this, Pope Francis has based his message for Lent 2022 on a Scripture Passage taken from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, 
“Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we     do not give up. So then, while we have the opportunity, let us do good to all”     (Galatians 6:9-10).

Beginning with the vivid image of ‘sowing and reaping’, the Holy Father points out that the Season of Lent invites us to conversion, to a genuine change of heart and mind, so that life’s truth and beauty may be found not so much in possessing as in giving, not so much in accumulating as in sowing and sharing goodness.

 According to what is highlighted by the Holy Father, God is the first to sow, sowing “abundant seeds of goodness in our human family.” During this grace-filled Season of Lent, “we are called to respond to God’s gift” by listening to His Word, so that it might “bear fruit in our lives.” In this way, we become “God’s co-workers,” which is a grace of sharing in God’s Own “bountiful goodness.”

This, in turn, leads to a harvest. When we sow seeds of goodness and kindness, “no matter how small,” in our own lives, we radiate light and carry “the fragrance of Christ to the world.” Recalling the Scripture Proverb, “one sows, while another reaps” (John 4:37), Pope Francis reminds us that “we see only a small portion of the fruits of what we sow.” The Pope goes on explaining that “sowing goodness for the benefit of others frees us from narrow self-interest, infuses our actions with gratuitousness, and makes us part of the magnificent horizon of God’s Benevolent Plan of Salvation.”

Pope Francis says that each year during the Season of Lent “we are reminded that goodness, together with love, justice, and solidarity, are not achieved once and for all; they have to be realized each day and each moment with effort.”

 He also invites us, once again, not to grow tired of doing good, and calls us to “believe firmly that ‘if we do not give up, we shall reap our harvest in due time’, and that, with the gift of perseverance, we shall obtain what was promised, for our salvation and the salvation of the entire human family.”

Prayer
Heavenly Father, soften the soil that is my heart and water it with the graces of Lent through prayer, fasting and acts of charity that it may blossom like the lily so that, with boldness, I may proclaim to the whole world at Easter: 
Christ the Saviour is Truly Risen from the dead