“Rend your hearts”!
It is the call of God’s word,
for this Lenten season!
in which we are summoned
to the conversion of heart.

Rend your hearts,
means breaking the chains,
to break the prison, the bonds
that bind us to evil,
that seduce us and lead us to an easy path,
illusory, provisional.

Rend your hearts,
constitutes the search for what is lasting;
to search for the treasure within,
to revive the pure and true love
and to move forward to be whole and entire.
To rend the heart and not only the clothes,
is to free oneself from appearances, from exteriorities,
to plunge into the depths of the soul,
from where sincere dialogue springs forth
respectful and welcoming,
born of a loving and inter-religious commitment.

Rend your hearts to welcome, value and
and appreciate the differences and diversities
which enrich and exalt the human being
at any age and liberate them from vanity.

Rend your hearts to receive the ashes,
which remind us that we are dust, dust;
no person is totally whole, complete, finished.
We are all clay with the Divine vital breath.
We are always on the way,
in constant transformation and improvement,
in the hands of the Creator, Triune God,
compassionate and merciful Father and Mother.