On the evening of February 22, Pope Francis celebrated Holy Mass with a rite of blessing and laying of ashes in the Basilica of Santa Sabina, on the Aventine Hill in Rome: the beginning of Lent for the Church, a time to “return to the essential,” to be reconciled with God.

Holy Quadragesima reminds us that the world cannot be confined within the narrow framework of personal needs, the Bishop of Rome said in his homily, because the Lord must have the main place in our lives, not just “scraps of time,” so we must “stop the dictatorship of ever-overflowing plans and the demands of ever more superficial and cumbersome ego; what really matters should be chosen.”

The gracious time of Lent, the Holy Father stressed, should not be wasted, but realized in the three great ways of almsgiving, prayer and fasting. “It is not a question of outward rites, but of gestures expressing the renewal of the heart, to which sincerity of spirit and coherence of action must always correspond. In the eyes of God, our almsgiving, prayer and fasting express who we really are: His children, brothers and sisters. These three paths reveal our compassion for those in need, they encourage us to meet our loving Father, and they are a “spiritual gym” where we give up the superfluous and return to the truth about ourselves. According to Bishop Rome, ashes remind us, remind us of who we are and where we came from, that the Lord is God and we are but fragile creations of His hands that belong to our Creator and need Him. Only with God do we rise from the ashes; without Him we are but dust.

The Lord Jesus, the Pope stressed, awaits our return and asks us not to despair, even when we fall into the dust of our own weakness and sin: “For He knows our composition and remembers that we are dust. We, on the other hand, often forget this, believing that without Him we would be self-sufficient, strong, and invincible. According to His Holiness, the forty days of preparation for Easter are a time of truth, a favorable chance to shed the masks of falsehood and hypocrisy, “to remember who is the Creator and who is the creation. In the ways of Quadragesima, we can realize that man exists only “in a relationship with God and in a vital relationship with others,” so self-sufficiency is false, and idolatry of the ego is destructive, because it “locks us in a cage of solitude.

Lent is an auspicious time to return to God, to our brothers and sisters, a time to break the chains of individualism, Pope Francis said at the end of his homily.