(February 26, 2009) Pope Benedict XVI invited all Catholics to live this Lent practicing
prayer, almsgiving and fasting following the example of St. Paul. The Pope affirmed
this Wednesday before receiving and distributing ashes at the Basilica of St. Sabina.
He began the Ash Wednesday events by presiding over a prayer assembly. A penitential
procession of cardinals, bishops and laypeople travelled from St. Anselm to St. Sabina
for the Eucharistic Celebration. In the homily, the Pontiff spoke about the liturgy,
which shows us "what the orientation of our spirit should be, and offers us the singular
spiritual journey we are undertaking." He continued: "The call to conversion emerges
as the dominant theme in all the components of today's liturgy.” "God's promise is
clear," said the Holy Father, "if the people listen to the invitation to be converted,
God will make his mercy triumph.” In the Gospel, he said, "Jesus puts us on guard
against the pangs of vanity, which lead to ostentation and hypocrisy, to superficiality
and self-complacency, and stresses the need to nurture rectitude of heart." He added,
"At the same time he shows us the means to grow in this purity of intention, by cultivating
intimacy with the heavenly Father." Referring to the Pauline Jubilee Year he pointed
out: "Paul experienced in an extraordinary way the power of the grace of God, the
grace of the Paschal mystery which Lent itself lives. The whole of his preaching,
and even before, the whole of his missionary life, was sustained by an interior force
that led back to the fundamental experience of grace." Pope Benedict emphasised
that Paul "lived from the Word of God: thought, action, prayer, theology, preaching,
exhortation, all in him was fruit of the Word, received since his youth in the Jewish
faith, fully revealed to his eyes in his encounter with Christ dead and risen, preached
for the rest of his life during his missionary run."