The Lenten season began Wednesday with Christians around the world gathering to attend Ash Wednesday services.
In the churches of the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, Catholics attended Ash Wednesday services, where the ashes were placed on their foreheads in the sign of the cross as the priest said the following words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Bishop Daniel E. Flores, of the Brownsville Diocese, celebrated Ash Wednesday Mass at the BSETB Lecture Hall on the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and Texas Southmost College campus in Brownsville.
Dozens of students, staff and other attended the Mass that is held yearly on the campus to give students the chance to attend Ash Wednesday services.
Destiny Contreras, a sophomore from Houston, said she was happy Ash Wednesday services were held on campus because she wasn’t sure if there were any churches near campus.
“I am eight hours away from home, and I can’t be with my family today to get my ashes. But I am still keeping myself accountable and getting my own ashes on my own,” she said. “I told my great-grandma and my mom that I would.”
Contreras talked about what Ash Wednesday means to her, which she said is the sacrifice “God made for us. He sacrificed himself for all of our sins.”
During his homily, Flores said Lent provides Catholics and other religions that observe the Lenten season with three practices that include prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
Flores said others around the world have no choice but to fast because they have no food and that when Catholics fast, “we remember it is a just small way that we let the Lord know that we haven’t forgotten them.”
In almsgiving, Flores said we should give if we can, as he reflected on the story of the widow who offered her only two coins to God.
“It’s not how much you give; it’s about the fact that you thought enough to give something…so in another way, it’s just a way to kind of, again, to let the Lord know that we remember, that there are people who have a lot less than we do and sometimes they are right around us,” he said.
Flores said when we pray, it lets God know something else that we remember.
“We can’t fix everything. We don’t have it in our power to make it a perfect place,” he said.
“Because we can’t do everything is why this thing about prayer is important…We pray for the coming of the kingdom and Jesus asks us to pray, and in Lent we need to focus on what Jesus asks of us…remember what Jesus asks to not forget the poor.”
Fabian Rodriguez, a junior at UTRGV, also attended Ash Wednesday services on the campus and said Ash Wednesday means a lot of things to him.
“It’s like the remembrance that we are here briefly on earth, and it’s also the recognition that we need Jesus, we need God and he is going to guide us through all of Lent and all of our life,” Rodriguez.
According to the Catholic Church, Lent is a 40-day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday. It’s a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter.
This year, Easter Sunday is on April 9.
Flores said Lent is going toward something and doing something and that it’s not stationary.
“It moves towards Jesus who offers himself in a complete and perfect act of love,” he said.
“With Jesus, the world could be brought to a better place…Jesus just says be an instrument of peace in those lives,” Flores said.
“Have faith God sees, God sees everything…the best way to do penance is to do something good…do something good for somebody who otherwise would not know that goodness and do it because Jesus asks,” Flores said.
In his Ash Wednesday address to Catholics, Pope Francis said, “During this liturgical season, the Lord takes us with him to a place apart. While our ordinary commitments compel us to remain in our usual places and our often repetitive and sometimes boring routines, during Lent we are invited to ascend ‘a high mountain’ in the company of Jesus and to live a particular experience of spiritual discipline – ascesis – as God’s holy people.”
