Pope Opens Lent with Ancient Rite

(06 Feb 08 - RV) Pope Benedict XVI today renewed a tradition stretching back over 1500 years when he dispersed ashes on pilgrims gathered in the station Church of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill.


The Aventine Hill is a portrait about how the Church is both ancient and new. The station church for Ash Wednesday , Santa Sabina, looks much like it did when it was built 15,000 years ago. Yet the Church where Pope Benedict began the service, Saint Anselm, is only 100 years old. From there, the Holy Father processed to the sound of the Litany of the Saints, as he made his way to the more ancient basilica down the road.


Here, the season of Lent begins. In Rome, there is a station church for every day the penitential season. All are ancient, but most of accrued the baroque ornaments common to churches in this region of Italy. Santa Sabina, however, retains an austere character, which seems to fit the start of the season.


Here, Pope Benedict distributed Ashes, the sign of penance and conversion. During his homily, he reminded the faithful that Lent is a journey of true conversion, and invites us to prayer, penitence, and fasting.


He said "the example of Christ’s prayer on the Cross, where he both prayed My, My God, Why have you abandoned me, and also Father Into your hands I commend my spirit, shows us a person abandoned by all entrusts himself completely in God. Lent teaches us to experience God as the only anchor of Salvation".


Pope Benedict says that "true prayer is a dialogue with God, and without this our interior dialogue becomes a monologue, giving rise to thousands of self-justifications. Prayer, therefore, is a guarantee of being open to others. True prayer is the engine of the world, because it keeps us open to God. Without prayer, there is not hope, just illusion, which induces us to escape from reality".


The Holy Father also said that "with prayer, fasting and almsgiving are places of learning and practice of Christian hope. Citing ancient Christian writers, he says these three dimensions are inseparable, nourishing each other, and bearing greater fruit, when practiced together."


Pope Benedict also spoke about suffering. He said "Jesus suffered for the truth and justice, bringing to mankind the Gospel of Suffering which is the other side of the Gospel of love". The Holy Father reminded everyone that "the greater the hope is that animates us, the greater also is the capacity to suffer for truth, love, and goodness, and that we should offer up the small and great trials of our daily existence and insert them into the great compassion of Christ".


Hear more: