His stirring and inspiring words were read out during the Mass in Rome on Ash Wednesday.
“We bow our heads in order to receive the ashes as if to look at ourselves, to look within ourselves. Indeed, the ashes help to remind us that our lives are fragile and insignificant: we are dust, from dust we were created and to dust we shall return,” wrote the pontiff.
“We learn this above all through the experience of our own fragility: Our weariness, the weaknesses we have to come to terms with, the fears that dwell in us, the failures that consume us, the fleetingness of our dreams and the realisation that what we possess is ephemeral.
“Made of ashes and earth, we experience fragility through illness, poverty and the hardships that can suddenly befall us and our families.
“We also experience it when, in the social and political realities of our time, we find ourselves exposed to the ‘fine dust’ that pollutes our world: ideological opposition, the abuse of power, the re-emergence of old ideologies based on identity that advocate exclusion, the exploitation of the earth’s resources, violence in all its forms and war between peoples.
“This ‘toxic dust’ clouds the air of our planet impeding peaceful coexistence, while uncertainty and the fear of the future continue to increase.”
The tragedy of death is always with us and we can treasure life all the more when we accept the reality that life for each of us will end .
Pope Francis said that the ashes, dust to dust “reminds us of the tragedy of death”, ……… “In many ways, we try to banish death from our societies, so dependent on appearances, and even remove it from our language. Death, however, imposes itself as a reality with which we have to reckon, a sign of the precariousness and brevity of our lives,” Pope Francis said.
“Despite the masks we wear and the cleverly crafted ploys meant to distract us, the ashes remind us of who we are. This is good for us. It reshapes us, reduces the severity of our narcissism, brings us back to reality and makes us more humble and open to one another: None of us is God; we are all on a journey.”
Pope Francis tells us that we are reminded by the Ashes to live in the presence of Jesus of Nazareth ….“who has taken upon himself the dust of the earth and raised it to the heights of heaven.”
“This, brothers and sisters, is the hope that restores to life the ‘ashes’ of our lives. Without such hope, we are doomed passively to endure the fragility of our human condition,” He said.
“Particularly when faced with the experience of death, a lack of hope can lead us to fall into sadness and desolation, and we end up reasoning like fools.”
So while we are reminded of the fragility of life we treasure each and every life as precious and of great eternal value.
