The Lenten period wishes to highlight a critical phase that precedes a transformation. A gestation time for the birth of new thoughts and new lifestyles. A time of silent work waiting for flowering.
In defining the period of Lent, Bishop Tonino Bello has a stupendous and very suggestive image. He says: this Lenten period "begins with an ash shampoo and ends with the washing of the feet". Thus from head to toe the whole of life passes under the wash of purification on the meaning of living and commitment to the service of the ideals nourished by the Holy Spirit in moments of prayer, generosity and penance.
«The ash shampoo» has as its elements the splendor of the olive branches, blessed on Palm Sunday, but the olive trees were also witnesses of Jesus' suffering in solitude in Gethsemane.
Furthermore, the Church carries out the rite of imposition of ashes forty days before Easter. The number forty in the panorama of the history of salvation is a crossroads of novelties. The first time the number forty is found at the flood, when God contracts the alliance pact with Noah and the sky lights up with the seven colors of the rainbow. Moses in his fortieth year is called by God to begin his mission. Moses stayed on Sinai for forty days before receiving the Decalogue. The journey from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land lasts forty years. Even the New Testament is crossed by the number forty at significant moments. Forty are the days from the birth of Jesus to his presentation in the temple. Forty days have passed in the desert. His preaching lasts forty months. His resurrection takes place after forty hours of stay in the tomb and forty are the days in which Jesus appears resurrected to the apostles before his ascension to heaven.
At the end of Lent we are invited to participate in Jesus' Supper with the apostles; Jesus gets up from that table, puts on the servant's apron and washes the feet of his guests. In that circumstance the entrance to the fullness of communion with the Father opens up through Jesus, servant for the love of humanity. That shared bread and that lavender mark the limit between the old and the new life. Only the soul that during the forty-day exodus has experienced the light of purification and is nourished with the bread of eternal life is able to face the darkness of discomfort and defeats.
Only by descending into the dark depths of one's soul, walking through the thickets of evil and wickedness that lurk in the soul, can we reach the light of redemption. Easter is not a goal, but a departure to walk on new paths illuminated by the light of Christ's victory over evil and death.