Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Chris A. Quilpa
Your Turn

The season of Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, March 5. And as what (ailing) Pope Francis noted, “The first element in our Lenten spiritual journey is prayer. Prayer is the strength of the Christian and of every person who believes.”

Ash Wednesday is a Christian tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. Symbolizing our mortality, the ashes, in the shape of a cross on a believer’s forehead, signifies that “you are dust and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19)  It reminds us, humans, that we’re mortals and we’ll die, but with the belief that we’ll rise up like Jesus Christ and have eternal life with our Lord, God in Heaven.

It’s a day to start fasting and abstinence, prayer, and almsgiving for forty days — habits or practices that can help Christians to grow in/with their faith. 

Lent is a forty-day Church event faithfully observed by Christians, believers, disciples and followers of Jesus Christ, God’s begotten Son. It commemorates His life, ministry, death and resurrection.

Encompassing a time of new beginnings, rebirth, revival, growth, and transformation, Lent is a golden opportunity to reflect on what is important in life, especially our spiritual life, and what we can do to live a life of faith, hope, charity, love, peace, humility, and holiness. 

Church teaching encourages us to observe or practice prayer, fasting, alms-giving, and abstinence to help our physical and/or, more importantly, our spiritual health and soul. Our spiritual soul needs nourishment and nurturing with a clear conscience, a sincere act of forgiveness, contrition and atonement of our sins by prayer, thanksgiving, confession, receiving the Blessed Sacrament or Holy Communion regularly, reading inspirational Christian books and articles; listening, internalizing, and actualizing the Scripture readings, the Good News, and homilies or sermons of our pastors or religious leaders, and giving up something and doing simple “acts of love” for others.

“In the face of so many wounds that hurt us and could harden our hearts, we are called to dive into the sea of prayer, which is the sea of God’s boundless love, to taste his tenderness,” said Pope Francis. “Lent is a time of prayer, of more intense prayer, more prolonged, more assiduous, more able to take on the needs of the brethren.”

We hope our faith continues to be strong and solid, deep and intact. We hope to grow with our faith and live with it through our actions and interactions with others, reminding ourselves we’re all brothers and sisters of Christ, children of God.

May our Lent be filled with the wisdom and knowledge of God, His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit that guides and enlightens us all as we continue to do what we have to do as good Christians—to do God’s will—to love Him and our enemies, and to always “trust in the Lord with thine own heart and lean not unto thy own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy path.” (Psalm 3:5-6) 

And as the Jubilee Year of Hope is underway, may our hearts be filled with love, hope, charity, and prayer (as embodied in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, Redeemer of the world) during Lent through Easter and beyond!

CHRIS A. QUILPA, a retired U.S. Navy (Hospital Corpsman) veteran, lives in Suffolk. Email him at
chris.a.quilpa@gmail.com.