A letter to meditate on Lent, the words always present and challenging the Bishop Don Tonino Bello.
Dear,
ashes on their heads and walk on water.
Between these two rites, the road winds of Lent. A road, apparently, less than two meters. But, in truth, much longer and more tiring. Because it is from your head to get to the feet of others.
not enough to go along the fifty-day period from Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday. It should be a lifetime in the Lenten season is to be reduced in scale.
Repentance and service. Are the two great sermons The Church entrusts to ashes and water, more than words. There is no believer who is not seduced by the charm of these two sermons. The others, those made from the pulpit, maybe soon they forget. These, however, no, because the symbols that speak a "language long-life."
is difficult, for example, avoid the shock from the ashes. Although
light falls on the head with the violence of hail. It becomes a real hammer blow that call to the only thing that counts "converted and believe the gospel."
shame that not everyone knows the rubric of the missal, that the ashes must be obtained from olive branches blessed last Palm Sunday. If not, the allusions to the commitment for peace, the acceptance of Christ and the recognition of his one Lord, the hope of final entry in the heavenly Jerusalem, would be far more practical route of a journey of conversion. What
"shampoo to ashes," however, is imprinted forever beyond the time when, in your hair soft, earthy debris that you find yourself in the morning, scattered on the pillow for a moment suggest the scales have fallen from crusts of our sin. Likewise
remains always indelible jingle of the water in that basin. It is the oldest preaches that each of us memories. As children, we have "heard it through the eyes", full of wonder, after elbowing a hundred sides, to go in the front row up close and spy on people's emotions.
a sermon, that of Holy Thursday, which was built with twelve identical sentences, but without monotony. Full of tenderness, though divided on a predictable script. Free of rhetoric, but that again for discounted passes: the offertory of a foot, the rise of a pitcher, mix in a towel, the seal of a kiss.
A strange sermon. Why not pronounce words, kneeling in front of twelve symbols of human poverty, is a man's mind only remembers kneeling in front of the consecrated hosts.
Mirage or fade? Glare caused by sleep, or a symbol for those who sleep in expectation of Christ? One-off for the evening of paradoxes, or plastic handbook for our daily choices?
evocative power of the signs!
embark, then, the journey of Lent, suspended between ash and water. We burn the ashes on his head, as if just out of the crater of a volcano. To turn off the heat, let the search for water to pour ... on the feet of others.
Repentance and service. Tracks on which he is obliged slip the way of our return home.
ash and water. Primordial ingredients of the laundry of the past. But above all, symbols of a full conversion, which want to grasp at last from head to toe.
Don Tonino Bello, Bishop
ashes on their heads and walk on water.
Between these two rites, the road winds of Lent. A road, apparently, less than two meters. But, in truth, much longer and more tiring. Because it is from your head to get to the feet of others.
not enough to go along the fifty-day period from Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday. It should be a lifetime in the Lenten season is to be reduced in scale.
Repentance and service. Are the two great sermons The Church entrusts to ashes and water, more than words. There is no believer who is not seduced by the charm of these two sermons. The others, those made from the pulpit, maybe soon they forget. These, however, no, because the symbols that speak a "language long-life."
is difficult, for example, avoid the shock from the ashes. Although
light falls on the head with the violence of hail. It becomes a real hammer blow that call to the only thing that counts "converted and believe the gospel."
shame that not everyone knows the rubric of the missal, that the ashes must be obtained from olive branches blessed last Palm Sunday. If not, the allusions to the commitment for peace, the acceptance of Christ and the recognition of his one Lord, the hope of final entry in the heavenly Jerusalem, would be far more practical route of a journey of conversion. What
"shampoo to ashes," however, is imprinted forever beyond the time when, in your hair soft, earthy debris that you find yourself in the morning, scattered on the pillow for a moment suggest the scales have fallen from crusts of our sin. Likewise
remains always indelible jingle of the water in that basin. It is the oldest preaches that each of us memories. As children, we have "heard it through the eyes", full of wonder, after elbowing a hundred sides, to go in the front row up close and spy on people's emotions.
a sermon, that of Holy Thursday, which was built with twelve identical sentences, but without monotony. Full of tenderness, though divided on a predictable script. Free of rhetoric, but that again for discounted passes: the offertory of a foot, the rise of a pitcher, mix in a towel, the seal of a kiss.
A strange sermon. Why not pronounce words, kneeling in front of twelve symbols of human poverty, is a man's mind only remembers kneeling in front of the consecrated hosts.
Mirage or fade? Glare caused by sleep, or a symbol for those who sleep in expectation of Christ? One-off for the evening of paradoxes, or plastic handbook for our daily choices?
evocative power of the signs!
embark, then, the journey of Lent, suspended between ash and water. We burn the ashes on his head, as if just out of the crater of a volcano. To turn off the heat, let the search for water to pour ... on the feet of others.
Repentance and service. Tracks on which he is obliged slip the way of our return home.
ash and water. Primordial ingredients of the laundry of the past. But above all, symbols of a full conversion, which want to grasp at last from head to toe.
Don Tonino Bello, Bishop
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