As Lent began last week, I watched an Instagram reel, something that our LA Catholics team produced.
It was a simple testimony from an older woman with ashes on her forehead, speaking in Spanish, about why Ash Wednesday is important to her.
The woman said: “It’s important that we never forget that we are dust and to dust we shall return. And we must know that throughout the year we should visit the churches because through the Lord, we have life, and we have food, and we have air, and a place to live; and we must give thanks for our health.”
There is wisdom in these words and they reflect the spirit of this holy season.
The Scriptures remind us often that our time is short. One of the psalms says that we are like flowers that bloom for a little while, until the wind sweeps us away.
That same message is delivered to us in the sign of the ashes: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
But death does not define the limits of our life. We may come from the dust of the earth, but God used that dust to create us in his own divine image.
God made us for holiness, because he is holy and we bear his image. And the Father sends Jesus among us, as his only Son, to show us the wonderful possibilities of our lives.
St. Paul said that just as we have borne the image of the first man, Adam, who was created from the dust of the earth, we are destined to bear the image of Jesus Christ, the “new man” who came down from heaven to be “a life-giving spirit.”
This is the journey of our lives and the purpose of our lives: we are called to perfect the divine image in which we are created, to be transformed into the image of Jesus, by his grace.
God knows this journey will take us a lifetime, that it will mean beginning and beginning again.
We all bear the burden of Adam’s original sin. Our human nature has been wounded.
We are inclined to use our freedom to commit sins, to make bad choices, to hurt people. We are prone to think more about ourselves and our comfort than we do about others. We have a hard time trusting in God’s goodness.
We make the same confession at the start of every Mass: “I have greatly sinned … in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.” In this lifetime, there will never be a day when that is not true.
The Church gives us the holy season of Lent each year to help us to step back, to slow down and take stock of our lives.
Where are we in our journey with Jesus? Are we living the way he wants us to live? How can we do better? What things in our life do we need to change?
Lent is not a gloomy time. God never wants us to be beating ourselves up for our failings and weaknesses.
God knows who we are. We are sinners who he is calling to become saints. The Church gives us this holy season to look honestly at ourselves, and to help us to do the hard work of becoming saints.
The Church proposes three disciplines during Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These practices are given to purify us, to focus us on the foundations of our spiritual life.
Prayer returns our focus to our friendship with God and the need for us to make this friendship our highest priority, growing deeper in our relationship by talking to him every day, listening for his voice, reading his words in the Scriptures.
Fasting reminds us that everything we have is a gift from God and that we should live with a spirit of thanksgiving and sacrifice, offering our lives back to serve God in love.
Almsgiving opens our hearts to love our neighbor in a spirit of generous service.
Through these Lenten practices, we come to understand more deeply the heart and the mind of Jesus.
And as these practices become habits in our lives, we will find ourselves living more and more like Jesus: loving as he loves, seeing the world as he sees it, treating other people as he does.
Pray for me and I will pray for you.
Let’s strive to make this the best Lent ever, to really make progress in our journey with Jesus.
May holy Mary, our Blessed Mother, pray for us in this holy season, and may she help us to grow in our likeness to her Son.
