Pope Francis: ash remembers the fragility and hope we are called

Due to his hospital admission and his delicate state of health, Pope Francis could not participate in the Mass of this Ash Wednesday or in the traditional prison procession that takes place every year to the Holy Basilica Sabina of Rome.

Cardinal Angelo of Donatis, Penitentiary Major, presided in his place the Holy Mass and read the homily of the Holy Father before the faithful and members of the Roman curia who participated in this celebration of the beginning of Lent.

In his homily, Pope Francis stressed that the ashes “revive in us the memory of who we are, but also the hope of what we will be.” In this regard, he said that, although they remind us that we are dust, “they lead us to the hope we are called.”

The fragility and smallness of our life

Pope Francis also stressed that the path to Easter is done “between the memory of our fragility and the hope that, at the end of the road, who awaits us is the risen.”

The gesture of lowering the head to receive ashes is, according to the Holy Father, a way of “looking at ourselves”, making “the fragility and smallness of our life.”

“It teaches us above all the experience of the fragility we experience in our tiredness, in the weaknesses that we must face, in the fears that inhabit us, in the failures that burn us inside, in the expiration of our dreams, in verifying what ephemeral are the things we possess,” he said.

He also put other examples that show this fragility, such as “the experience of the disease” or poverty, as well as “the ideological contrast, the logic of prevarication, the return of old identity ideologies that theorize the exclusion of the other, the exploitation of the resources of the earth, the violence in all its forms and the war between the peoples.”

All this, “added the Pontiff,” is like ‘toxic dust’ that clouds the air of our planet, preventing peaceful coexistence, while the uncertainty and fear of the future grow in us every day. “

In this sense, it affirmed that fragility reminds us of the “drama of death”, that in our “appearance societies we try to exorcise in many ways and even exclude from our languages”, but that is imposed as a reality with which we must deal, “sign of the precariousness and transience of our lives.”

“Despite the masks we get and of the artifice often ingeniously created to distract us, the ashes remind us who we are. This helps us. He remodeled us, attenuates the hardness of our narcissms, returns us to reality, makes us more humble and available to each other: none of us is God, we are all on the way, ”said the Holy Father.

An invitation to revive hope

Pope Francis stressed that Lent is also an invitation to rekindle hope in us: “If we receive the ash with our heads inclined to return to memory of who we are, the Lenten Time does not want to leave us with our heads, but, on the contrary, it urges us to raise our heads towards the one who rises from the depths of death, also dragging ours eternal life ”.

According to the Holy Father, this hope “revives the ashes that we are” and without it “we are condemned to passively support the fragility of our human condition and, especially before the experience of death, we sink into sadness and desolation.”

The pontiff invited the faithful to walk towards the hope of Easter and to put God again in the center of their lives, “so that the memory of who we are – chilies and mortal as ashes scattered by the wind – is finally enlightened by the hope of the resurrected.”

He also urged to practice alms, fasting and prayer during this time, at the same time that he recalled that “only the love of God and among us can really satisfy us and give us the hope of a better future.”

“He will erase the ashes of death forever to make us shine with a new life. With this hope in the heart, let’s get on the way. And let’s reconcile with God, ”concluded the Holy Father.