The Ash Wednesday Liturgy is a “call to penance, to humility, to be aware of our mortal condition, not to fall into despair, but rather to accept, in our very mortality, the unbelievable closeness of God, Who, beyond death, opens for us the path to resurrection, to a paradise finally restored to us”. This is clear for Benedict XVI, who in his homily for the Ash Wednesday Mass presided over by him at Rome’s Basilica of Santa Sabina this afternoon, focused on the “liturgical sign of the ashes”, a “natural element which in the Liturgy becomes a sacred symbol, very important on this day which marks the beginning of the Lenten journey”. The Pontiff explained that the ashes are “one of those material signs which take the universe inside the Liturgy. The main signs are obviously those of the Sacraments: water, oil, bread and wine, which become real sacramental matter”. The ashes, the Pope explained, are “a non-sacramental sign, yet linked to the prayer and sanctification of the Christian People”, and they “remind us of the great picture of creation”. Hence the Pontiff recalled the Book of Genesis, the curse of the serpent, and the “punishment” inflicted on man as a result of original sin. (continued)

22/02/2012 -