During Mass Feb. 26 in St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral, Trenton, Bishop O’Connell urged congregants to listen to the words of the prophet Joel, “rend your garments, not your hearts” because, said the Bishop, “showing repentance … can turn God’s judgment to mercy, can stir his concern for us to the point of pity.”

PHOTO GALLERY: Ash Wednesday Mass in St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral, Trenton

PHOTO GALLERY: Ash Wednesday Service in St. John Neumann Church, Mount Laurel

The invitation of the prophet Joel, he said, is “to ‘return to the Lord with fasting, weeping, and mourning.’ Why? Because we are sinners … The season of Lent provides us with the opportunity to fine tune our choices, to sharpen our vision, to intensify our willingness to heed God’s voice and to hold fast to him … that is the path to life: from ashes to Easter!”

Marking foreheads of the faithful with ashes, Bishop O’Connell explained, evokes an ancient symbol for showing grief, and is present throughout both the Old and New Testaments, even mentioned by Jesus himself. “The practice of placing ashes on the heads of sinners became commonplace in the Catholic Church by the 10th century as a liturgical symbol marking the beginning of Lent, the Church’s period of penance.”

The point, he noted, of the outward symbol is to affect inward reconciliation. “The words we hear as ashes are imposed on our foreheads, ‘turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel,’ should ring in our ears over and over again throughout the season … we should give up something to create emptiness for God to fill. We should also do something positive that shows we belong to Christ.”