Ash Wednesday – 18 February 2026
Nearly 1500 years ago, the great Christian writer, Augustine penned in his memoirs, The Confessions
“Too late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient, O Beauty so new.
Too late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside myself, and there I sought you! In my weakness I ran after the beauty of the things you have made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The things you have made kept me from you – the things which would have no being unless they existed in you! You have called, you have cried, and you have pierced my deafness. You have radiated forth, you have shined out brightly, and you have dispelled my blindness. You have sent forth your fragrance, and I have breathed it in, and I long for you. I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst for you. You have touched me, and I ardently desire your peace.”[1]
Through the account of his own journey, Augustine came home to himself. Lost in all the things around him, he discovered the grace to go inside, inside himself, and to dwell there. As he would go on to say
“Look into the fields, hollows and innumerable caverns of my memory, filled beyond number with innumerable kinds of things! I run through all these things, and I flit here and there. I even go as deep as I can, yet there is no limit. So great is the power of memory, so great is the power of life in me, a human being who someday must die . . . Where do you dwell in my memory, O God? What resting place have you made to yourself? For you have granted my memory the great gift of dwelling there. But why do I bother asking the question in what ‘place’ do you dwell, as though the memory had different places in it? What is certain is that you indeed dwell there because I find you there when I recall you to mind.”[2]
To come home, home to ourselves. This is the invitation that is put before us as we enter the season of preparation for the great Festival of Easter. As the prophet Joel declares in our First Reading, “Return to me with all your heart.” (Joel 2:12)
The word return matters. For we know we drift. We get distracted. We become tired. We survive more than we live. Of course, that drifting often looks very respectable. We are busy, capable, productive, educated, responsible. We manage full calendars, heavy workloads, family pressures, financial stress, and the constant noise of a fast world. We hold together lives that look fine from the outside — while inside many carry anxiety, grief, disappointment, or quiet loneliness.
It is here then that the season we begin this day greets us: to slow us down enough to tell the truth about ourselves before God. The ashes we are about to receive are a sign to us or our truth. Our receipt of them says to us. We are fragile. To gain this honesty is to come home to ourselves. For our truth lies in that we are people who hunger, who do mourn and who do yearn for what is right. We are people who experience a sense of alienation in ourselves, with each other and with God, and who yearn to overcome the sense of separateness. We are people who so desperately long for a gentle, balanced life in which we know we are accepted without accusation and shame. We are people who search for a sense of our own selves in a world in which we very often feel as victims in one way or another, unable to be who we intuit ourselves to be. It is when we come home to this deep awareness of our self – the truth of our self – that we also realise we are not as self-sufficient, and autonomous as we thought. We see ourselves as needing one another.
And for this reason, Jesus turns to the three traditional pillars of Jewish piety – prayer, fasting and almsgiving – and seeks to rescue them from becoming hijacked by ego to being those quiet, hidden practices that reshape our heart. Prayer reshapes our hearts when it is simple and becomes that place of listening. Fasting goes deeper than food — it is also fasting from constant noise, comparison, resentment, harsh judgement, scrolling, and hurry. Almsgiving is not just donating money, but offering time, patience, welcome, and attention to those who feel invisible. Lent then is about becoming more human again — more present, more compassionate, more grounded in what really matters.
We begin our Lent this year at a time when the world feels heavy: Wars continue with no easy end. Social divisions feel sharper. Many people feel unsure about the future. Trust in institutions is fragile. Loneliness is growing, especially among the young and the old
Ash Wednesday reminds us that we do not change the world by shouting louder. We change it by becoming truer. And we do this with the companionship of Mary, our Lady of Dolours, Mother of Sorrows: Mary who knew sorrow, loss, uncertainty, and yet never closed her heart. She teaches us this Lent that faith is not denial of pain — but trust in God within it. She stays. She listens. She hopes.
So, when the ashes touch our forehead, let us hear the invitation to return. To return — not to guilt — but to grace. To return — not to fear — but to trust. Let us come home to ourselves again and find God waiting there as did Augustine so many centuries ago.
[1] Augustine, Confessions, X, 27, 38.
[2] Augustine, Confessions X .25.36.
