Editor's Note: Ash Wednesday Mass excerpts were added at 12:20pm Eastern March 1.

 

VATICAN CITY — On Ash Wednesday, Pope Francis said that while Lent is certainly a time of mortification, it’s also a journey of hope that leads to the joy of Christ’s resurrection — a journey that requires both daily sacrifice and love.

In his catechesis for the general audience March 1, the Pope likened our journey during the 40 days of Lent to the 40 years the Israelites spent wandering in the desert following their “exodus” from slavery in Egypt.

“And these 40 days are also for each of us an exit from slavery, from sin, to freedom, to a meeting with the Resurrected Christ,” he said, “a path that’s a bit challenging, as is just, because love is challenging, but it’s a path full of hope. In fact, I would say more: The Lenten exodus is the path in which hope itself is formed.”

During their time of wandering, God never forgot his people or his promise to bring them to the Promised Land, Francis said. But even so, in the face of trials on their journey, at times they were tempted to return to Egypt.

“All of us know the temptation to go backwards, right?” he said. “We all know it. But the Lord remains faithful, and that poor people, guided by Moses, arrived to the Promised Land. This whole journey is made in hope.”

The Pope explained how the celebration of Passover by Jesus became, in a sense, his exodus, since it was by his subsequent suffering and death that he opened to us the path to heaven.

“To open this road, this passageway, Jesus had to shed his glory, humble himself, make himself obedient to death and to death on the cross. Opening to us the path to eternal life cost him all of his blood, and thanks to him, we have been saved from slavery and sin,” he said.

This doesn’t make reaching heaven easy, however. “Our salvation is certainly his gift, but, because it’s a story of love, it requires our ‘Yes’ and our participation,” the Pope said, “as shown to us by our Mother Mary and, after her, all of the saints.”

“The fatigue of crossing the desert — all the trials, temptations, illusions, mirages — all this is to forge a strong, steadfast hope, on the model of the Virgin Mary, who in the midst of the darkness of the Passion and death of her son continued to believe and hope in his resurrection, in the victory of God’s love.”

As a preparation for Easter, Lent “takes light from the Paschal Mystery toward which it is oriented …” so although Christ has gone before us, rejecting all the temptations of the devil, we have to still do our part, which means returning to the sacraments and allowing ourselves to shed sin and be renewed, the Pope said.

“Each step, each fatigue, each fall and each round, everything has meaning only inside the design of the salvation of God, who wants for his people life and not death, joy and not pain.”

“With a heart open to this horizon, we enter Lent,” he concluded. “Feeling that we are part of the holy people of God, we begin with joy this path of hope.”

At Ash Wednesday Mass, Pope Francis spoke about the bad habits, negativity and sin present in our lives that cause us to be choked off from the life-giving breath of God, supernatural grace.

“The breath of God’s life saves us from this asphyxia that dampens our faith, cools our charity and strangles every hope,” he said March 1. “To experience Lent is to yearn for this breath of life that our Father unceasingly offers us amid the mire of our history.”

Marking the start of the Lenten season, Pope Francis prayed the Stations of the Cross at St. Anselm Church in Rome before processing the short way to the Basilica of Santa Sabina for the celebration of Mass, Benediction and the imposition of ashes.

Francis said that as we set out from the church, the mark of the ashes reminds us of our origin: “We were taken from the earth; we are made of dust.”

“True,” he said, “yet we are dust in the loving hands of God, who has breathed his spirit of life upon each one of us and still wants to do so.”

“He wants to keep giving us that breath of life that saves us from every other type of breath: the stifling asphyxia brought on by our selfishness, the stifling asphyxia generated by petty ambition and silent indifference, an asphyxia that smothers the spirit, narrows our horizons and slows the beating of our hearts.”

We get so accustomed to this, the Pope said, that it becomes normal for us, and we fail to notice that we are breathing air “in which hope has dissipated,” and only “the air of glumness and resignation, the stifling air of panic and hostility,” remain.

Lent is a time of saying No to all of this, he said, “no to the spiritual asphyxia” of indifference, of trivializing life, of excluding people and of looking for God while ignoring the “wounds of Christ present in the wounds” of others.

“Lent means saying No to the toxic pollution of empty and meaningless words, of harsh and hasty criticism, of simplistic analyses that fail to grasp the complexity of problems, especially the problems of those who suffer the most,” he said.

It is also a time to examine our manner of praying, giving alms and fasting, he said, to be sure that we aren’t doing it for the wrong reason, like to feel good about ourselves.

Instead, Francis said, “Lent is a time for remembering. It is the time to reflect and ask ourselves what we would be if God had closed his doors to us. What would we be without his mercy that never tires of forgiving us and always gives us the chance to begin anew?”

Moreover, it is “the time to start breathing again. It is the time to open our hearts to the breath of the One capable of turning our dust into humanity,” he said.

It isn’t a time to “rend our garments before the evil all around us,” he continued. Instead, we are called to “make room” in our lives “for all the good we are able to do.”

“Lent is a time of compassion,” the Pope concluded, “when, with the Psalmist, we can say: ‘Restore to us the joy of your salvation; sustain in us a willing spirit,’ so that by our lives we may declare your praise, and our dust — by the power of your breath of life — may become a ‘dust of love.’”