When presiding over the Ash Wednesday Mass at the beginning of Lent 2024 on February 14, the day on which the Catholic Church remembers Saint Valentine, Pope Francis pointed out that this time invites us to rediscover “the secret of life,” that says that it encourages you to return to God with all your heart, through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
The Mass began around 11:00 am (local time) in the Basilica of Santa Sabina – next to which Saint Thomas Aquinas lived – after the prayer in the Church of San Anselm and the traditional procession that takes place from there, presided over by the Major Penitentiary of the Church, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza.
Among those attending the Mass was Cardinal Ernest Simoni, who was imprisoned for 28 years in Albania for his fidelity to the Church and for having committed the “crime” of celebrating a Mass for the soul of the assassinated president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, whom the Pope has referred to as a “living martyr. ”
In his homily in Santa Sabina, a basilica located on the Aventine Hill – one of the seven hills on which Rome was founded – the Holy Father highlighted that “the ashes placed on our heads invite us to rediscover the secret of life.”
“He warns us: as long as you continue to wear armor that covers the heart, camouflaging yourself with the mask of appearances, exhibiting artificial light to show yourself invincible, you will remain empty and arid.”
Instead, “when you dare to bow your head to look inside, then you will be able to discover the presence of a God who has always loved you; Finally, the shells that you have built for yourself will be shattered and you will be able to feel loved with an eternal love,” indicated the Pontiff.
Pope Francis also highlighted that “if the fire of God’s love burns in the ashes that we are, then we discover that we are modeled by this love and that we are called to love; which takes shape in loving the brothers we have at our side, being attentive to others, living compassion, exercising mercy, sharing who we are and what we have with those who need it.”
For this reason, the Holy Father warned, “Almsgiving, prayer and fasting cannot be reduced to external practices, but are paths that lead us to the heart, to the essentials of Christian life.”
Pope Francis also pointed out that in Lent it is Jesus who invites each faithful to enter “into the secret” to “return to the heart”: it is “a journey from the outside to the inside, so that everything we live, including our relationship with God, is not reduced to exteriority, to a frame without paint, to a covering of the soul, but rather is born from within and corresponds to the movements of the heart; that is, with our desires, with our thoughts, with our feelings, with the original core of our person.”
“Lent then immerses us in a bath of purification and stripping; “She wants to help us remove all ‘makeup’, everything we put on to appear adequate, better than we really are,” she stressed.
The Holy Father further indicated that “returning to the heart means returning to our true self and presenting it as it is, naked and stripped, before God. It means looking inside ourselves and becoming aware of who we really are, taking off the masks we often wear, slowing down our frenzy, embracing the truth of ourselves.”
The Holy Father then warned against the current tendency to live thinking about “being noticed,” about the “need” to “be admired and appreciated.”
“Without realizing it, we find ourselves without having a secret place to stop and guard ourselves, immersed in a world in which everything, even our most intimate emotions and feelings, must become “social”—but how can What does not spring from the heart be social?—“he questioned.
“Even the most tragic and painful experiences run the risk of not having a secret place that guards them: everything must be exposed, flaunted, given over to the chatter of the moment. And this is when the Lord tells us: enter into the secret, return to the center of yourself,” Pope Francis recommended.
After encouraging us to listen to the voice of the Lord, leaving room “for silent prayer of adoration,” the Pontiff finally encouraged us to recognize ourselves before Him “for what we are: dust loved by God, and thanks to Him we will be reborn from the ashes of sin to the new life in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit.”