By Courtney Mares, OSV News
ROME (OSV News) — On Ash Wednesday, Pope Leo XIV encouraged Catholics to ask the Lord for “the gift of true conversion” at the start of the 40-day penitential season of Lent.
Speaking to English-speaking pilgrims at his Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square Feb. 18, the pope encouraged people to approach Lent as a time of “conversion of heart” so that “we may better respond to his love for us and share that love with those around us.”
“At the beginning of Lent, I urge you to live this liturgical season with an intense spirit of prayer so that you may arrive, inwardly renewed, at the celebration of the great mystery of Christ’s Resurrection, the supreme revelation of God’s merciful love,” Pope Leo added in Italian at the close of the audience on a sunny winter day in Rome.
Before the audience, the pope greeted pilgrims from the popemobile, frequently stopping to bless babies as he made his way through the square.
Continuing his weekly catechesis on the documents of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Leo offered a reflection on “Lumen Gentium,” the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which he explained “presents the Church as both a sign and an instrument of this plan of salvation.”
He said the Church is a sign “because the Church community makes the unity established by Christ through his Cross and Resurrection visible to the world today” and an instrument as
“It is through the Church that God achieves the aim of bringing people to him and uniting them with one another.”
“As we journey through a world still marked by division, let us ask the Lord to continue to guide his Church in the mission of sanctification and reconciliation,” he said.
In his message for Lent this year, Pope Leo encouraged the faithful to embrace the “ancient ascetic practice” of fasting, as well as “refraining from words that offend and hurt our neighbor.”
Lent is a liturgical season of penance stretching from Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday, during which Christians are encouraged to undertake voluntary acts of self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, along with charitable and missionary works.
On Wednesday afternoon, Pope Leo will lead a solemn procession on Rome’s Aventine Hill from the Benedictine Basilica of Sant’Anselmo to the Dominican Basilica of Santa Sabina, retracing a papal procession route that dates back centuries.
The procession will culminate with the pope offering Ash Wednesday Mass at Santa Sabina, one of the oldest surviving Christian basilicas in Rome. Built in 422 A.D., the ancient church is the first stop in the Lenten Station Church pilgrimage, a tradition rooted in the early practice of the Bishop of Rome celebrating the liturgies of the church year at various churches throughout the city. By the latter half of the fifth century, a fairly fixed calendar had developed, with Mass held at different churches throughout Rome each day of the Lenten season.
The station church tradition has experienced something of an Anglophonic revival in recent decades, spearheaded by the Pontifical North American College, which has offered a 7 a.m. English-language Mass at the station churches each day of Lent in recent years.
On Feb. 18, hundreds of people, including many American college students and seminarians, attended an English-language Ash Wednesday Mass at Santa Sabina organized by the seminary.
Courtney Mares is Vatican editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @catholicourtney.
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