The evocative rite of ashes marks the beginning of the holy season of Lent, during which the Church renews calls the faithful to radical conversion and trust in God’s mercy.

Let’s start with trust on our Lenten journey, sustained by fervent prayer, penance and concern for those in need. Lent is, in particular, useful opportunity to devote more attention to the children, in their families and in society: they are the future of humanity.

Lent is a time of penance, prayer and charity, a reality that never go out of style. Why Lent is a kind of spiritual training, the spirit of the gym, to buy more and larger domain on ourselves – and therefore more freedom – and to strengthen the Christian virtues. In the world there is one who fasts in protest and who out of necessity. Others are inspired by a religious motivation and others with a lay. There are those who die of hunger, and whoever makes the diet. For us, fasting means to reaffirm the primacy of the spirit, discipline our instincts, freeing the heart and open it to his brother who is in need. Penance is also accept the crosses that life presents to us and be able to offer our sufferings in union with those of Christ. Prayer is the breath of the soul and just like the air is necessary to our survival in this chaotic and distracted world. Only in dialogue with God we can read events in the light of faith. Carve out a desert space even in the obsessive rhythms of our time is vital. Charity is the very name of God, as the Gospel tells us Deus Caritas est. For us Christians, charity is the life, because we are in communion with God who is love. How do we then do not love our brothers? How can you not forgive, not to help, not to listen? We are called to be for our brothers the smiling face of God .. Penitence in the evangelical sense means above all “conversion.” In this respect it is very significant passage from the Gospel of Ash Wednesday. Jesus speaks of fulfillment of acts of penitence, known to and practiced by his contemporaries, by the people of the Old Covenant. But in the same time it criticizes the purely “external” way in which these acts, charity, fasting, prayer, because this way is contrary to the peculiar finality of the acts themselves. The end of the acts of penitence is a sincere turning to God to be able to meet with him in the human being, in the hidden part.
“When you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do … to be praised by men …; do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. ” “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites … to be seen by men … But … go into your room and shut the door, pray to your Father in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites … (but) anoint your head and wash your face, because people do not see that you are fasting, except to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you “(Mt 6.2 to 6). The spirit of penance and its practice encourage us to detach ourselves sincerely from all that we possess superfluous, and sometimes even necessary, and that prevents us from being truly what God wants us to be: “Where your treasure is, there is your heart “(Mt 6:21). Our heart is clinging to the material wealth? to power over others? to selfish domain subtleties? So, we need Christ Liberator that if we want it, can dissolve these bonds of sin that ostacolano.Prepariamoci to let ourselves be enriched by the grace of freeing us from every false resurrection treasure “Remember, man, you are dust and to dust you shall return ». Remember, man, that you are called to other things than these earthly goods and materials, which are likely to deviarti from the essential. Remember, man, your fundamental vocation: you come from God, and you return to God with the prospect of the resurrection, which is the way traced out by Christ. “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me can not be My disciple” (Luke 14:27) .The Christian, in fact, called by the Church to prayer, penance and fasting, the inner and outer stripping of himself, stands before God and recognized for what, is rediscovered. Lent is a time that makes us reflect on with the “Our Father relationships” and restores order, which must reign between brothers and sisters; is a time that makes us jointly responsible for one another; It frees us from our egos, from our pettiness, from our pettiness, our pride; is a time that enlightens us and makes us better understand that, like Christ, we too must serve.
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another” (Jn 13:34). ”

It ‘a time of truth that, like the Good Samaritan, induces us to stop on the way, to recognize our brother and to put our time and our possessions to his service in daily sharing. The Good Samaritan is the Church! The Good Samaritan and each of us! By vocation! For duty! The Good Samaritan lives charity.