“Holiness is not achieved by our efforts, for it is grace! By ourselves, we cannot remove the dust that sullies our hearts. Only Jesus, who knows and loves our heart, can heal it. Lent is a time of healing.”
In his homily in Rome’s church of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill this Ash Wednesday, Pope Francis gave this reassurance.
This first day of the beginning of Lent, the Holy Father–continuing an annual papal tradition–presided over an assembly of prayer that took place in the form of the Roman “Stations.”