Am I Truly on the Path?
Simone Riva - Lent is always a time that challenges us. Compared to the rest of the year, it’s a brief period—just forty days—but its intensity offers a way to approach everything else. In his Message for this Lent, Pope Francis writes: “We are all pilgrims in life, but each one can ask themselves: how do I allow this condition to challenge me? Am I truly on the journey, or am I paralyzed, static, filled with fear and lacking hope, or perhaps comfortably settled in my comfort zone?”
The first challenge of this time is to verify where we stand. Sometimes, history presents unexpected events that shake everyone, as happened during the COVID pandemic. In a letter published in the Corriere della Sera on March 1, 2020, Father Julián Carrón wrote: “In unpredictable situations like the current one, we are indeed awakened from our torpor, torn from the comfort zone in which we had comfortably settled, and the path of maturation that each of us personally and all together have taken comes to light, the self-awareness we have gained, the ability or inability to face the life we have in our hands.”
We cannot afford to go from one pandemic to another, waiting for the next tsunami to realize that we cannot just muddle through. That’s why the Church, in its care for our hearts, offers us a period like Lent each year.
What allows us, then, to leave our “comfort zone” and verify the path we are taking? The first step is to acknowledge the emptiness of what makes us think we’re fine. In this year’s Lenten Message, the Pope, referring to the gesture of ashes, writes: “We receive the ashes by bowing our heads downward, as if to look at ourselves, to look within. The ashes, in fact, help us remember the fragility and insignificance of our life: we are dust, from dust we were created, and to dust we shall return.”
There are many moments when, looking at our personal life or the surrounding reality, we realize that, as the Psalm says, “every man is but a breath; he busies himself in vain, he heaps up wealth not knowing who will get it” (Psalm 39:6). Our experience of fragility teaches us this, primarily through our tiredness, the weaknesses we must confront, the fears that live within us, the failures that sting, the transience of our dreams, and the realization that our possessions are fleeting.
When confronted with the void left by our failures, we might be tempted to rush to the mirror. The Holy Father continues: “Despite the masks we wear, and the artifices often artfully created to distract us, the ashes remind us of who we are. This is good for us. It puts us in our place, smooths the rough edges of our narcissism, brings us back to reality, makes us more humble and open to one another: none of us is God, we are all on a journey.”
Only by being honest with ourselves can we be convinced of the opportunity to step out of our comfort zones and earnestly resume our journey, perhaps by looking at those who walk this path more quickly and joyfully, confident in the good destiny that awaits each of us.
The author has not revised the text and its translations.
